Swords, Scales & Spooky Spirits
by EXNativo
Summary: Natsu is a quiet boy turned dragon turned boy, who doesn't quite understand life outside his numerous scrolls. Erza's smile is bright enough to blind all to her unhealthy obsession of all things that go stab. Gray is almost normal, when he isn't talking to ghosts or arguing with his strange tattoo.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: If you're into Naruto, may I suggest reading Pitch Black Magpie's Tuna Fish and Red-Splattered Pages? It's definitely worth your time, unlike almost basically the rest of the Naruto archive.

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Warnings: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Trace amounts of Angst, Likely juvenile levels of humour, No Bashing, Ghosts, Nonsense. Keep out of reach of children.

Pairings: N/A

Story Recommendation: Fate/stay night; Fate Zero: Avenger of Swords; by ForteOfTheBallad98

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Natsu is a quiet boy turned dragon turned boy, who doesn't quite understand life outside his numerous scrolls. Erza's smile is bright enough to blind all to her unhealthy obsession of all things that go stab. Gray is relatively normal, when he isn't talking to ghosts or arguing with his strange tattoo. Lucy is an heiress to an arguably criminal empire who accidentally stumbled into this mess and is content to stay; at least, when she isn't putting out spot-fires or trying to convince Happy that he is not, in fact, the next incarnation of the Devil.

* * *

"Aren't you extinct?"

The dragon in front of Gray jumped slightly, almost uprooting the tree it had been leaning against. Compared to some of the stories Gray had heard over the years, this one seemed to be far smaller than what was considered the norm, barely reaching to the canopy of the foliage surrounding the clearing they were both in. His scales were a shade of red that was nearing pink (and Gray could tell the dragon was a he, it wasn't wearing pants and that didn't look like a tail), his eyes a purple so deep it had crossed the threshold into black and hadn't looked back.

"Um… no?" There was a scroll in the dragons hands, or were they hands, he wondered? The edges of the parchment were crinkled, portions singed, a few new wrinkles appearing across it as the dragon cradled it in protectively against his chest. "Why would I be extinct?"

"Because you're different, and people kill things that are different." Gray fell to the ground and crossed his legs, scowling at the ghost that had copied his movements and made the dragon shuffle away a little. 'Ora shrugged, pulling himself out from where he'd fallen into the ground… and several trees. He was a very big ghost, after all. "That's what 'Ora says, anyway. I don't think it really counts because he's a demon and he's dead as well, but maybe demons are a type of people, and because humans are different to them the demons kill them because they're different."

The dragon blinked down at him. He didn't say anything.

Gray tilted his head to the side, narrowing his eyes and nodding slowly. "You're really smart." He informed the dragon, rocking back until he almost lost his balance and grabbing the soles of his shoes in an attempt to stabilise himself. "What's your name?"

The dragon stared down at the boy, who was waving a hand behind his head as though shooing away a bug. The boy, as he had been christened in Natsu's head, was about as large as he had been before he'd transformed, his dark eyes completely bloodshot. Every few seconds, the boy's attention would shift somewhere else, his body and the odd markings on his arm never stopping in their movement.

"…Natsu." This was odd. Ever since he had transformed, nobody who had come across him had wanted anything to do with him. When he'd first gone into a town, people had screamed and run away, a few brave souls grabbing any weapon they could get their hands on while everyone else fled. He was a dragon now, big and scary and with no chance of making any friends. Or at least, no chance before now.

The odd boy nodded again, hopping to his feet and looking around Natsu's entire body. The dragon shrank back slightly, feeling the overwhelming urge to cover himself until the boy stepped back, nodding happily to himself. "I'm Gray. It doesn't look like you have any ghosts hanging around you, that's good."

Natsu blinked at the mention of ghosts, shaking his disbelief off a moment later. Maybe he would have had some room for doubt if he hadn't been raised by and weren't currently a _dragon_. "No ghosts is a good thing?" He asked instead, silently hoping he wouldn't accidentally stumble into a topic that would upset his new sort of _oh please don't run away like all the others_ friend.

"Yep!" Gray nodded, falling over sideways and sticking his arm out before he hit the ground. It bent at an angle that looked uncomfortable, the writhing mass of markings on his other arm suddenly spreading across to the limb. As Natsu watched, his arm twisted and cracked into position, the sunny grin never leaving Gray's face. "It means nobody close to you has died, and you haven't killed anyone who wants revenge!"

"…Ah."

"Yep! I've got a ghost following me." Natsu opened his mouth, intent on pointing out that he hadn't actually asked, but Gray barreled on regardless. "He was kind of crazy when he was alive, and he killed my parents. But he's better now, and he watches over me!"

The air around the clearing groaned, the trees buckling and the ground shaking, the odd sensation only stopping when Gray stuck a hand out and it lay flat against thin air. "It's alright, 'Ora. I know it wasn't your fault, I'll find their ghosts eventually." Without warning, he twisted around on the spot, pointing one slightly shaky hand at Natsu's chest. "Your magic is really weird."

Natsu took a cautious step forward, lowering his neck until he could better see Gray's face. The bags under his eyes looked like they had been left there by one of Igneel's Iron Fists. "Gray, when was the last time you slept?"

"Huh? Sleep?" Gray shook his head, waving his hand in seemingly random patterns through the air. Natsu felt a strange tug behind his ribcage, ignoring it for the moment. "The ghosts always scream at night, the darkness reminds them of when they died. They make too much noise, and you can't sleep during the day because that's when the poltergeists attack. Nah, 'Ora usually just takes control of my body whenever I pass out to keep me safe. Aha!" With a whoosh, Natsu fell onto his back, feeling as though his body had just been squeezed through a tube half the width of his fingers. "Zeroth can see two different kinds of magic in your body. The dragon one was just in control, so I changed it around so you can choose which one you want to use. Hope you don't mind, but talking to a dragon was getting kind of weird."

Natsu furrowed his eyebrows, looking up at Gray… wait, looking up?

Natsu's hands were in front of his so quickly that Deliora jumped, knocking into Gray and making him jump too. Before his feet had even managed to get back to the ground, Natsu had grabbed him by the shoulders, uncaring about the fact that he was entirely unclothed.

"I'm human again!" He screamed in Gray's face, as if the boy _hadn't_ been the one responsible. Tugging on the magic that felt so much like Igneel, Natsu found himself breathing smoke through his nostrils as he once again eye level with the higher branches in the trees surrounding them, letting go of his mental hold of the magic and seizing Gray by the shoulder again.

"…You can see magic!?" He asked, in lieu of some of the things he actually wanted to say. He had been so used to life as a dragon, ready to spend the rest of his years in necessary exile. How long could dragons live, anyway? He'd never bothered to ask Igneel, but judging from some of the stories his foster father had told him, he was willing to bet a very long time.

Gray may not have known it, but he had just made a friend that would be sticking with him for the rest of his life.

"Wha- can I see magic?" Gray snorted, shaking his head and holding up his arm. It was a difficult procedure, considering the death grip Natsu still had on his joint, but he managed. "People can't see magic, that's just silly. Zeroth is the one who can see magic."

Just like that, the markings shifted in front of Natsu's eyes, coiling together and forming the shape of a hand.

Which then waved at him.

OK then.

 **XxX**

"So just so we're clear, this is the right direction?"

"The ghosts are all saying that it should be straight ahead, maybe a couple more minutes."

"Got it. Just curious, how many of them are there?"

"I lost count at about three hundred and seven. They keep moving around."

"Alright."

Natsu returned his eyes to the front, narrowing them at the horizon before him. He was back in his dragon form; far more comfortable after spending so much time in it, plus with it he could fly and carry Gray. It was nearing mid-afternoon, the curtains slowly closing on one of the craziest days of Natsu's life, and he could say with full confidence that it had also been on of the best.

Gray was odd. There was no other way to put it, he just was. Even discounting the ghost thing, there were small things about him, which would all add into one big picture of… well, odd. He was constantly moving his head from side to side, occasionally narrowing his eyes and muttering under his breath. His spine would always stiffen whenever they walked past someone in the town they'd found to buy him some clothes (he'd hidden in the forest just outside and waited for Gray to return with something he could wear), and a small dagger made of ice had materialised in his hand when they'd wandered past a man sitting on a bench, who had absolutely _reeked_ of blood.

They'd walked a little bit faster past that one. Gray had been wincing for ten minutes afterwards, rubbing soothing circles over his ears and resolutely refusing to walk or even look back in the direction they had come from.

It was when they had sat down for lunch and gotten to talking that Gray had asked him for a favour. Ghosts naturally congregated around people who could see them, and seeing as he was apparently the first person in fifty years who could pick up on their existence with any reliability, they had been seeking him out for years. Many that came up to him had some sort of request, a message to send or a person to kill (which he would always ignore, eventually those ghosts would either go away or be eaten by Deliora (and after the first one was eaten they tended to get the message very easily)), but over the last month more and more had been approaching him with the same request.

Please, do something, _anything_ , about the Tower of Heaven.

There were published horror stories that paled in comparison with some of the things Gray had heard and subsequently told him. Some of the ghosts had claimed that those who died while in the middle of its construction would have their bodies used as materials. People of all ages had perished and escaped into the here and now, including two ghosts who had been over a hundred and fifty and less than five minutes old, respectively. The infant ghost had done nothing but cry, until its parents had joined it and they had all faded into the afterlife.

It was getting worse, or so Gray said. Natsu believed him, of course, which was why he agreed immediately when Gray asked if he could please fly him there so something could be done. The ocean surrounding the tower was a no go, any boat would just be sunk immediately and Gray both couldn't swim the entire distance there and couldn't afford to freeze himself a path. He had been training until he was bleeding and unconscious when the first ghosts had come in, but he just wasn't in possession of that kind of power yet. Not when he was still so young and (according to Zeroth) his body had yet to stabilise the ethernano that made up the crux of his being.

Natsu had outright laughed in Gray's face when he was asked if he could fight, almost dying on the rice grain that managed to get itself stuck in his oesophagus. He was the son of a dragon and could turn _into_ a dragon; it wasn't a question of if he could fight. It was a question of if there was someone out there dumb enough to fight _him_.

Something on the horizon caught Natsu's eye, jerking his back to the here and now. Gray had told him to keep an eye out for a tower, and he was pretty sure he'd just found it. It didn't look very finished; it didn't even look like construction had managed to get past laying the foundations, but he wasn't about to pretend he knew everything that was happening here. "Right ahead of us, Gray."

"Thank, Natsu. Zeroth, where are- Natsu, slow down!" Natsu flared his wings, shedding altitude along with speed. He felt Gray stumbling across the scales on his back, wincing slightly when his foot caught a particularly sensitive one. "Ah, sorry Natsu, I should have given you more warning. 'Ora, fifty feet up and twenty feet to the left, give us an opening please!"

The air shifted, the same guttural whine as that morning's moving past Natsu's ears and making the boy turned dragon shudder. People were beginning to shout from within the tower, apparently only just now noticing the dragon hovering not too far away from it, the noise raising to hysterical levels when the entire island shook and an enormous hole opened up in the side of the building. Adhering to the plan they'd made up earlier that day, Natsu charged forward, shifting back to human in the smoke cloud that had been kicked up and rolling to his feet in the corridor he'd found himself in. Gray sailed over his head, kicking off the wall and shedding no momentum as he charged towards the first corner.

"How big is Deliora!?" Natsu hissed as he caught up to Gray, the two of them leaping into the air in sync and clotheslining a couple of guards that had been sprinting towards the breach. They both collapsed, out of it before they even hit the ground.

"Really big." Gray whispered back as they ducked into an alcove, away from a whole squadron of people wearing uniforms. The plan hadn't really been advanced far past getting into the tower, none of the ghosts that had sought Gray out really knew the layout of the tower well. As it were, most of them were still outside; in order for a ghost to interfere with the living world, a lot of different factors had to be met, including having physical and mental strength while they had been alive. Deliora was the most powerful ghost Gray had ever met, so he had been sent off with one of the more adventurous ghosts to destroy any big weapons he came across. The rest of the handful of ghosts capable of being helpful were spreading throughout the tower, knocking guards and cultists unconscious through any means they could.

There weren't many of those ghosts. All those who had accompanied them here had been slaves; their spiritual acuity had been shot to Hell by the lack of proper sustenance for physical labour and the general feeling of helplessness before they'd ultimately died. The plan was for the whole lot of them to work together and gather some boats for the slaves to escape on, but there wasn't much hope of that. Even with the extra energy Gray's presence seemed to grant them with, even extremely powerful ghosts had their work cut out for them levitating a table.

The group of guards disappeared around a corner. Judging from the way they all came flying back and crashed into the wall, and the menacing growls rippling through the air after them, they'd just run into Deliora. Gray and Natsu slipped from their hiding space, Gray Ice-Making a battering ram that they both grabbed onto and slammed into the closed door they had been running towards.

The people standing guard over the slave cages straightened, pointing their weapons at the intruders. "A couple of kids!?" One of them exclaimed as the dust settled, others relaxing their stances slightly as Natsu brought his hands to his mouth and sucked in a deep breath.

"Fire Dragon's Roar!"

Gray wrinkled his nose at the stench of burning flesh and screams. Natsu lowered his hands, examining the corridor with a closed-off expression. The rest of the flames flicked out as they waited in silence, before Natsu blew out a sigh and jerked his head forth. "Do we get them out now or later?"

Gray bit his lip, pointedly not looking at the man in front of him, nor the way he clawed weakly at the ground towards his comrade. Even if the ghosts hadn't been hassling him at literally all hours of the day, getting the slaves free would have been his priority. Ghosts had family in here; fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, nephews, nieces. Grandchildren, grandparents. Releasing them now could present a risk, though, if they had no way of defending themselves upon coming across a group of cultists. But they looked so _desperate_ in those cages…

"Now." He decided aloud, turning back to the door they had busted down to get in. "DELIORA!"

The few slaves who recognised the name jumped and cowered, while the rest merely stared in undisguised confusion or hope. A few seconds passed before the enormous ghost's foot appeared in the doorway; Natsu swivelled around automatically when Deliora's head poked in through above the doorway, already familiar enough with the pressure the enormous spirit seemed to exude with his mere presence. According to Gray, it was similar to a dragon ghost that he had once come across.

"Get these people outside. Protect them." Deliora nodded, and Gray turned back to Natsu, the two of them stepping forth in uniform.

Some of the people in the cages needed a little coaxing to leave them, mainly those who had spent years upon years in there and the children. With remarkably well behaved manners, they filed into the corridor outside of their cells, eagerly waiting as Gray and Natsu systematically knocked doors down, some even moving forward to help.

Deliora continued to smack approaching guards away, their pained grunts and flying bodies drawing smiles from those watching the proceedings. Gray had just been turning around to address the mass of people waiting as he approached the last cell in the corridor when his tattoo (as he'd informed Natus after they'd eaten) suddenly flared into view and spread out across the entirety of his arm.

"Zeroth, wha-" Gray cut himself off, his head snapping towards the cell he had been walking towards. An old man sat in the corner while a group of children gathered nearer the centre; all but two jerked away when he turned towards them, a blue haired boy with a tattoo descending down his face and a girl with long red hair whose head was bowed to the ground.

"Magic potential?" He murmured, glancing down at his arm, watching Zeroth's mark as it twisted and coiled. Natsu was walking up behind him, not that he paid the familiar approaching footsteps any attention. "In the same cell? …Why? _How_?"

"Your hair is really pointy…" Gray almost jumped as the girl's neck snapped up, the smile across her face too cheerful. Gray's eyes shot open, Natsu's muttered "holy shit" reaching his ears as they both stared at her face.

Her horribly, _horribly_ scarred face.

Lines of dead cells pervaded every portion of her features, dried blood caking most of her body like a second skin. Her hand was reaching towards the bars, some of the fingers mangled or outright missing, her fingernails having all been removed and left to bleed freely. A few teeth were absent from the smile, many others crooked or chipped, and one of her eye sockets was outright _empty_ , evident by the way to cloth that had been tied around it sagged inwards.

The boy sitting beside her was dressed in complete rags, most of what he had been wearing having been torn and used as bandages for the girl beside him. He was dangerously skinny, his ribs entirely visible, and as they two of them watched he tottered to his feet and moved to stand in front of the girl protectively. None of the slaves were in any way healthy, but these two were in the worst condition Gray and Natsu had seen yet, which was only further compounded as a keening giggle escaped the girl's throat.

"Your hair is really pointy…" She repeated, falling down onto her side with the force of her giggles. Blood splattered the ground before her, prompting Natsu into action as he grabbed at two of the bars and _ripped_ them off. "Can I use it to stab someone?"

"Later." Gray turned back to the doorway, his voice shaking slightly. "Everyone, get out of here and find the boats. If there aren't any, make some. Deliora." The temperature in the room dropped, everyone's breath appearing as a fine mist before their mouth. "If you see a guard, I don't care what you do, so long as it hurts them."

"Gray." Natsu had one of the girl's arms around his neck, the blue haired boy supporting her from the other side. The rest of the cell's occupants were moving towards them now, the old man's mouth set in a thin line as he watched. "Where do we go from here?"

"Fly her out of here, find a doctor or something. Come back for me or don't, 'Ora will stay with me" Gray stepped into the corridor, nodding as the last of the slaves filed out of the door. His t-shirt slid off his frame, revealing his wiry, muscled midsection and the way his tattoo was cavorting across his entire body. When he shot a glance over his shoulder, they could all see that the whites of his eyes had turned black. "I'm going to find whoever's in charge of this place."

In the time it would have taken them to blink, he was gone.

 **XxX**

I'm not actually sure whether I'll continue this one or not. I'm busy with other stories right now, but if I'm anything then I'm fickle. I dunno, I guess if enough people like the look of this one it'll convince me it's worth the effort. Thanks for reading his far, **[WARNING SHAMELESS SELF-ADVERTISEMENT]** if you've enjoyed my writing then I have another Fairy Tail story out starring Gray, Melting Hours. Time Travel, ain't it fun?

Also, my keyboard is broken. I'm holding it together with duct tape and prayers, so if there's a few grammatical and spelling errors, now you know. Feel free to point them out to me if you do see any, though hopefully you won't.

Anyway. See you next chapter, if I even write one, that is.

 _ **X**_


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: In case you couldn't tell, this story is going to be set in an Alternate Universe. The core four characters (who you will be fully introduced to this chapter) will be strong. Very strong. Perhaps absurdly so. Are we talking Wizard Saint by the beginning of the canon plot? Most definitely, seeing as one of them already was. If I were you and I didn't enjoy reading stories that focus on powerful characters, or stories that are not written to be serious, then I would avoid this one. Then again, if I'm me and you're you then who am I to tell you what to do? Knock yourself out (preferably after you review :D).

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 **Disclaimer:** You're lucky I don't own Fairy Tail. Like, seriously, you have no idea.

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Warnings: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Trace amounts of Angst, Likely juvenile levels of humour, No Bashing, Ghosts, Nonsense. Keep out of reach of children.

Pairings: N/A

Story Recommendation: [I need to read more instead of wasting my life. Pls ignore.]

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Natsu is a quiet boy turned dragon turned boy, who doesn't quite understand life outside his numerous scrolls. Erza's smile is bright enough to blind all to her unhealthy obsession of all things that go stab. Gray is relatively normal, when he isn't talking to ghosts or arguing with his strange tattoo. Lucy is an heiress to an arguably criminal empire who accidentally stumbled into this mess and is content to stay; at least, when she isn't putting out spot-fires or trying to convince Happy that he is not, in fact, the next incarnation of the Devil.

* * *

"Uh… hi. My name's Jellal, and this is Erza Scarlet. Oh, I'm Jellal Fernandez. Fernandez is my last name, I don't think I told you that. Did I tell you that?" Without looking up from his scroll, the enormous dragon shook his head, unfurling a little more of the bottom of his parchment and wrapping up an equal amount of the top. Jellal smiled weakly up at him, doing his best to ignore the way the ground trembled and the blood curdling scream coming from one of the Tower of Heaven's upper floors. "Alright, cool, so now you know. What… uh, what's your name?"

"Natsu."

"Natsu, huh? Cool name. Not bad. I like it." A section of wall near the top of the tower was blown outwards, sailing clear of the island and off over the horizon. What was unmistakably a severed head bounced out of the wreckage and into the waves, Jellal securing a hand around Erza's wrist without even looking as the girl moved to collect it. The girl pouted up at him, before manoeuvring her arm so he was holding her hand instead, her attempts to tug him along down to the island's beach barely making him budge. "…So how long have you been a dragon?"

Natsu tilted his scroll sideways, a third piece of paper unfolding itself and extending down almost to the ground. Considering Natsu's claws had the scroll suspended so high that Jellal couldn't actually see it anymore, that had to count as fair effort from whoever had written it. "A while."

Jellal nodded absently, glancing out over the water as that shuddering growl – what had that other boy called it, Deliora? – swept across the island once more. The rest of the slaves were long gone, having had to take every single boat that had been on the island just so there was enough room, leaving there nothing to look at on land except dirt and the reminder of his constant suffering over those long, gruelling months.

His only method of getting off the island would be to swim. That, or hitch a ride with the boy who had barely strung together more than two words at a time in his presence, the one who could apparently transform into a Dragon at will. That sounded like a far more pleasant method, which was the main reason why he was now attempting to ignore to the screams behind him and the section of ocean just a little to his right that was slowly turning red.

He just had to wait for the other boy. The one who was somehow weirder than his companion, the one who could turn into a _Dragon at will_. Not that Jellal had a problem with that; insanity was par for the course in his old cellblock, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to get any closer to figuring him out. Jellal didn't like not being able to figure something out.

He probably wouldn't have even had a reason to think about it, had Erza not chosen to jump out of the first window they came across while on their way out of the tower.

Jellal wasn't proud to say that in that moment, he had _screamed_. The lack of air in his lungs had been the only thing preventing him from screaming _again_ when Natsu clicked his tongue, wrapped an arm around his skinny waist, and _jumped out after her_.

The first scream had been out of fear. The fruitless attempts at a second had been more of a means to express his extreme frustration at the sudden turn of events. Finally out from behind bars, only to die once he hit the ground, especially when he didn't have a say in the matter? What utter bullshit.

Then they'd caught up to Erza, and Natsu had transformed into a Dragon. Erza had giggled, clapping her hands and asking to be placed down near all the shiny lights while Jellal had taken a deep breath and confirmed that the warmth in his pants was indeed his mid-day gruel making a grand encore appearance. Ah well, his clothing already stank, now he just had another reason to jump in the ocean the first opportunity he got. They'd landed, Jellal hadn't bothered to ask why Gray was drawing a jagged circle into the ground or why all the boats were slowly crawling on their own towards the water, intent on having his first bath in ages.

He'd gotten back just as Gray clapped his hands, and the spectres had appeared. They had been shaped like humans, and they had moved like humans, but one of them had looked him in the eyes and left him feeling utterly… void. Tiny trails of ice followed them as they drifted down to the beach, the forms expelling fog and spreading dew drops over the few blades of grass the island had.

Gray had disappeared in between the time it had taken him to blink, the rest of the slaves had fallen through the Tower of Heaven's front entrance, and the screaming had picked up from within. Most of the people had stared at the Dragon, a majority of the others had stared at the spectres, many of the others had simply chosen a boat to curl up in, and the sparse remaining few had made their ways to the icy ghosts with hope clear in their eyes.

Jellal had almost decided which boat he wanted to leave on when Erza looked up at him, her remaining eye large and shining.

"I wanna stay."

The twitch running rampant across his spine and through various organs had even made the Dragon take a step back.

" _Why!?_ "

"Their hair, Jellal. It's so spiky." Her smile grew so bright that one of the ghosts melted. Thankfully, Gray must have foreseen something akin to that happening, as one of the spectres that had been standing around and doing nothing moved forth to take its place. "Think of all the people I could stab with it."

She had looked so damn happy in that moment that his cold hard slave heart had melted, just a little bit. Utterly defeated at nothing but a look, Jellal had turned away, his cold hard slave heart hardening over and covering itself with brimstone and obsidian all over again as every single person they had shared a cell with waved at them from a departing boat, which was being pulled along by a small group of the icy spectres.

Simon and Wally had always gone on about finding what had happened to their siblings, so it wasn't like he'd had much faith in convincing them to weather the storm along with him, but where were Millianna and Sho's excuses? Rob had smiled at him from the back of the group, the suggestive way his eyebrows had been moving neither lost nor appreciated even at that distance. With about as much faith as he'd first had when he was being shipped to the island, Jellal glared sullenly as boat after boat was filled and towed away, stubbornly refusing to offer Natsu any assistance as Erza poked at his toe and asked to borrow one of his fangs. For research purposes, of course.

It wasn't Natsu's fault, per se, but it made him feel slightly better. After everything he'd been forced through, he felt he deserved it.

He wasn't exactly sure when Natsu had pulled his scroll out, or where he'd pulled it out of. He wasn't sure when the last boat had finally disappeared from his view, or when Erza had finally calmed down and begun playing with his matted, unkempt and less than pleasant to the touch hair. So lost in his thoughts, he almost missed when the island finally stopped shaking and Natsu stowed away his scroll. In fact, he would of, had Erza not poked him in the cheek and pointed conspicuously at a now very human Natsu.

"Gray's coming back." Natsu wrinkled his nose, plugging up his nostrils with two of his knuckles. The entrance of the Tower of Heaven buckled outwards as Gray walked through, the air behind him coated in blood and various other nondescript things that belonged within a human body.

Jellal grimaced. Erza let out a soft 'ooooohh', tilting her head and following the blood splatter with her eyes.

Gray marched up to the small group, his chest still bare and bit of his hair glued down to his head with questionable adhesive agents. The giant splatter of blood kept on moving, making its way down to the waves.

"So I found the guy in charge." He began conversationally, wiping something from the corner of his mouth and flicking it onto the ground. He paid no attention as Erza struggled past him, Jellal's feet digging trenches in the dirt as he was dragged towards the beach. "Turns out we didn't get along. Told me he wanted to revive Zeref of all things; that was just before I cut his tongue off, mind you. 'Ora ended up eating him, said something about poetic justice. I don't think he was using the term correctly…"

Natsu nodded, poignantly ignoring the morbid parts of Gray's recap. It was easy for one to overlook things that would usually cause distance in people when one enjoyed someone's company after such a long time being by oneself. "Cool. No idea what a Zeref is, but cool."

"Some really old guy. Made 'Ora kill my parents, and a whole bunch of other people. I'm thinking I'll kill him one day." Gray shrugged, glancing around at the nothingness that made up much of their surroundings. "So, I guess you waited for me?"

Natsu looked down at himself, kicking a small rut into the ground just to make sure he was still present. "Looks like it, yep."

"Ah… cool. Nobody's really done that for me since Ur. I think they all think I'm insane…" Gray trailed off as Natsu suddenly stiffened, the boy turned Dragon turned boy tilting his head back and sniffing the air, a frown spreading across his lips. "Natsu? What's wrong?"

"I think…" Slowly, Natsu turned around to face one of the many paths that had been trudged through the dirt, rocks obscuring much of the view before it got down to sand, a sheer descent at the end robbing anyone standing atop it of their visibility down. Gray manoeuvred around until he was standing next to him, ignoring the noises Jellal and Erza were making as the former dragged the latter away from the scary floating crime scene. "I think someone just got here, but I can only smell magic. No actual person."

Gray's eyebrows furrowed, his tattoo pulsing to life and coiling around his wrist like a particularly evil looking bracelet. He'd just finished getting in contact with Zeroth when someone crested the hill, her steps halting and her face slackening in shock at the sight of them.

Several things slammed into Gray in that moment, none of the physical in nature.

Her face. Even from the distance, her features were achingly familiar. Small differences; the shape of her nose, the rise of her cheekbones, it wasn't a perfect replica of his former mentor, but it was so close. Too close to be a coincidence.

Her magic. Cold, freezing, descending lower than even his in temperature. Her shock slowly formed into a scowl as her eyes landed on him, his pulse quickening as she took a step back and her form wavered.

The fact that her ghost hadn't been following Ur around. No matter what, every single ghost infant he'd ever come across had stayed close to the parent they were closest to, living or dead. Ur had only ever told the story once, during one of the rare nights she would call off training and dive into a liquor bottle. There hadn't been any ghosts taking up residence in Ur's house, so either the father of her baby was still alive or he had felt no reason to stick around.

She was supposed to be dead, but there had never been a spirit or a body. Gray had always assumed that he had been wrong, or there must have been extraneous circumstances. That for whatever reason, she had been drawn to the father she had never met, either following him around or moving on with him to the afterlife.

Never had he really considered the possibility of her being alive. Sometimes it was hard for him to remember there being any difference.

"Ultear!"

She had disappeared before his voice had stopped ringing from his throat, her eyes full of hatred and vitriol as she faded from view. Gray was off like a shot from a cannon, barrelling through two lingering ghosts as he tore down the path towards where the Thought Projection had been standing. Footfalls echoed from behind him as he dropped to his knees, his tattoo swirling along with arm furiously.

"What do you mean, you can't track her!?" Gray slammed the hand that wasn't currently covered in tattoo into the dirt, leaving tiny stalagmites behind as he pulled away. "She's Ur's daughter, Zeroth! She's still alive, I _need_ to find her!"

"Gray-"

"'Somewhere East' doesn't help me, Zeroth! You saw her face before she left, she's not going to sit around and let me come to her! You can sense her magic, so have a taste and try telling me what her maximum range with that spell-"

"Gray!" The Ice Mage paused in his tirade, glancing over his shoulder as Natsu raised his now scaled head and sniffed at the air. A forked tongue flicked out from between his teeth, and he closed his eyes, tilting his head slightly to the side in concentration. "…About four hundred klicks East and fifty North, moving South at about twenty-five klicks an hour."

Gray blinked up at him, his tattoo fading back into his skin. He opened his mouth to talk, the words dying in his throat as something behind Natsu groaned.

The Dragon stepped aside, and Erza smiled brightly, her hands still clutching her growling stomach.

 **XxX**

"So, do you want to destroy it?"

"Nah, you can do it. I'm not the one ghosts kept annoying, am I?"

Gray grinned from where he was standing on Deliora's shoulder, almost perfectly eyelevel with the direct centre of the Tower of Heaven. Natsu hovered beside them, Jellal and Erza gripping onto the scales on his back for support, one looking nervous and the other absolutely thrilled. "Ready, Zeroth?" He asked his arm, which pulsed black in answer.

The Ice Mages grin grew slightly deranged as he raised his arms and crossed them over his head, his tattoo jumping from one limb to the other with almost palpable glee. "Ice-Make: Zeroth's Collection!" The black lines shot off from Gray's skin, curling in on itself and stretching up until it the top of the column had disappeared into the clouds themselves. Snow began to drift down as the top of the constructing morphed to ice, the frozen water beginning to climb from Gray's hands to meet in the middle and coalesce with a flash bright enough to block out the sun.

"Sky-Scraper!"

A very big blade, hefted by a very small boy, descended on the Tower of Heaven with the ominous crack of a sound barrier shattering. Just one sound barrier, Gray didn't want to be rude.

The Tower of Heaven folded like wet paper.

* * *

Erza and Jellal watched on from the safety of Natsu's back as the Tower of Heaven descended down to Hell, the lucky pieces abandoning the doomed island altogether to sail out into the ocean.

"Can I-" Erza began, actual stars visible in her eye if one were looking vigilantly enough.

" _NO!_ "

 **XxX**

"WHAT HAPPENED!?" The doctor yelped as she charged into the hospital room the group of children had been shown to, the severity of Erza's injuries carrying enough weight for their arguments of not being separated to be acquiesced. Already, much of her was covered in bandages, Erza going against everything she had been hurriedly told over the last ten minutes and crossing her arms defiantly.

"I fell down a flight of stairs."

"You have several missing digits, more than half of your body is scar tissue, and you only have one remaining eye!" Another doctor pushed his way into the room, placing down several recently grown fingers (ah, the miracles of modern day medical magic) wrapped securely in tissue and rushing back the way he had come.

"It was a very powerful flight of stairs."

Much to Jellal's ire, the surgery bay Erza had then been wheeled into was off limits for anyone not affiliated in some way with said surgery. It would be many hours until she managed to sneak out of her hospital room and escape on a certain Dragon's back, whatever had been possible healed through the mystical powers of the Deus Ex Machina- I mean, magic and enough money to cover her medical bills lying suspiciously on her pillow.

Her exfiltration would have been completely flawless, had she not accidentally fallen down a flight of stairs.

 **XxX**

"Pardon me, but myself and my companions here are in search of a female we believe to be on this ship. Have you perchance encountered a magic user by the name of Ultear? Purple hair, about this tall?"

Natsu barely raised his claw off the ground, staring expectantly down at the silver haired teenager that had been part of the group they had come across upon Natsu landing on top of their ship. When the teenager didn't move a muscle, Natsu sighed, almost accidentally blowing Rustyrose from where he was standing and into the water some couple of kilometres down.

From beside him, Gray took a punch to the face, retaliating with a kick that made his opponent cup himself with his still burning hands.

Without warning, Natsu's head plunged down, the boy he was standing in front of making a very interesting sound as Natsu flashed his very sharp teeth right in front of his glasses.

"Talk."

"Ultear's on the ship!" Rustyrose straightened up, almost talking too quickly to understand. Natsu's left cheek was engulfed in an explosion that was already disappearing into his mouth before it had stopped echoing, his disapproving look actually bringing Azuma pause. "She's been in a really bad mood lately but I don't know why please don't eat me!"

"Great! Thank you very much." It was a strange sight, watching a Dragon grin down at you, not that Rustyrose cared all that much as Natsu turned away. Blowing out a sigh of relief, he almost choked on his own air as the girl that had been riding the Dragon jabbed a fork twice in his direction, drawing a line across her throat with her finger. The blue haired boy beside her rolling his eyes and sending him a sympathetic smile didn't make him feel any better.

"Gray." The assortment of Ice-Made weapons in the boy's hands flew across the top of the airship, detonating against the goat man that was currently looking up at Natsu and drooling. The explosion was magnificent, the aftermath and subsequent absence of about half the goat man's body not so much.

"Gray!" Black flames, the ones that had washed over Natsu's scales not too long ago and actually stung a little bit, charged across the makeshift battlefield in relation. With coiling black ropes, a shield of ice was formed, the inky markings repurposing themselves into a whip that found itself lashing across the belly of the enormous man that had been trying to sneak up on him.

Natsu sighed, clearing his throat and cracking his mouth open wide. The pink spears bouncing off his chest may have actually warranted some concern, if they had been doing literally anything other than bouncing harmlessly off his chest.

"GRAY!" Wind howled as Natsu's roar reverberated across the ocean they had been floating over. The clouds overhead split, all wind reversing and all nearby animals fleeing for their lives. Gray froze, his expression that of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, while everyone else in the vicinity took a fair few big steps back. "What did I say about fighting before asking?"

"He started it!" Gray shouted, stabbing an accusatory finger in Zancrow's direction. Natsu turned and raised an eyebrow at the God Slayer, pretending not to notice Gray's victorious smile. "He called ice shit."

"Ice is shit!" The part of Zancrow that lacked self-preservation instincts shouted out. That is to say, all of him.

"Your face is shit!"

"Gray." Natsu's rumbling voice thankfully cut off the argument before it could be revived, his head in one of his massive clawed hands. "Ultear is inside. Go talk to her or whatever you want to do, so we can leave."

"Not so fast." The main entrance from the roof into the ship had been ruined somewhere in the barely minute the group of four had been present, and now an old man was standing atop the rubble, his arms crossed and his absolutely magnificent beard flowing in the wind behind him. Gray scowled at him, while Natsu and his passengers watched on with mild interest. "This airship is the headquarters of Grimoire Heart. Only members are permitted to step inside."

Gray narrowed his eyes, and Natsu resisted the urge to sigh and shake his head.

* * *

"Ultear, open up!" Gray hollered at the top of his lungs, his shiny new Guild mark proudly displayed across his right pectoral as he slammed a ball-up fist against the only purple door in the living quarters corridor.

 **XxX**

I love it when I get an idea, and while I'm thinking that it's stupid and ridiculous and it would never happen but wouldn't it be funny if it did, I remember that this is fanfiction. In case you were wondering, I decided that the core four would be joining Grimoire about five minutes into the writing of this chapter.

I feel that I am going to have a lot of fun in the future.

Till next chapter!

 _ **X**_


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Recently started getting into RWBY. This information is not important, but I figured I'd let you know anyway. Maybe I'll expand my repertoire of stories a little in the future. Maybe not. Who even knows?

* * *

Warnings: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Trace amounts of Angst, Likely juvenile levels of humour, No Bashing, Ghosts, Nonsense. Keep out of reach of children.

Pairings: [Currently] N/A

Story Recommendation: Fairy Tail; Acnologia is Not Your Father; by Evilkitten3

* * *

Natsu is a quiet boy turned dragon turned boy, who doesn't quite understand life outside his numerous scrolls. Erza's smile is bright enough to blind all to her unhealthy obsession of all things that go stab. Gray is relatively normal, when he isn't talking to ghosts or arguing with his strange tattoo. Jellal is… Jellal. Lucy is an heiress to an arguably criminal empire who accidentally stumbled into this mess and is content to stay; at least, when she isn't putting out spot-fires or trying to convince Happy that he is not, in fact, the next incarnation of the Devil.

* * *

It was with a fond sort of exasperation that Zancrow looked back on the days in which his life made sense.

They had been few and far between, but they had been present all the same. Maybe they would start with him falling out of bed due to the airship hitting a patch of turbulence at a big time, or maybe it would start with him toppling into the oblivion outside because someone had thought it would be funny to leave the window near his room open during the night, and he would always be too tired to make an attempt against the pressure that would rip him out of his giant metal home.

Either way, breakfast would always be the same. Some fire, with a side of mustard and a pickle. Perhaps a glass of whatever it was his Master kept in those bottles marked 'Emergency Fuel Supply' if he was feeling especially peckish; clueless as he was to what was actually in them, it tasted superb, and Hades hadn't said anything that one time when he'd watched him pour and drain a cup of the stuff.

He'd been shaking his head as he walked away, though. Probably lamenting the fact that someone else had found the treat he'd apparently worked to disguise. Stingy old bastard.

The days were typically where events would find some source of definition. Maybe he would pass some of the time hitting on Ultear, either striking out in ways that were hilarious and hilariously painful or managing to finagle some actual spending time out of her (it hadn't happened yet, but he could dream). Maybe he could train with Azuma or take on one of the rare jobs that made it onto the airship. Once upon a time he may have even spent a few hours with Meredy, a task he wouldn't dare attempt while Ultear was in her current mood, or even when she was in the same general vicinity.

She just took things way too seriously. So what if he decided to teach the pink haired girl that had randomly appeared out of her room one day how to speak? 'Penis' was a perfectly acceptable candidate for initial diction!

Heh heh, diction.

Zancrow shook his head in an attempt to wipe the goofy grin from his face, rattling his train of thought back onto its track. Yes, there had been those days when his life had made some semblance of sense. Few and far in between they had been, but the fact of the matter is they had _been_.

And then a Dragon decided to randomly show up one day. And then the children riding the Dragon and said Dragon itself decided to join his Guild. His highly illegal and definitely not a place for children so why did they keep showing up Guild. The fact that the Dragon in turned was revealed not too long after that to be another _fucking_ child with a more punctual grasp on Fire Magic than he himself had, a child who was _younger than him_ , was just the icing on the cake.

And then Hades assigned him to be Natsu's guardian. After he was told who Natsu actually was, he had proceeded to throw a tantrum, and was subsequently dragged by the collar of his shirt from the room, courtesy of the child he was supposed to be watching over. People whom had once cowered and shied away whenever he passed outright pointed and laughed at him. And he couldn't do anything about it, because whatever fire he tried to throw would end up down the Dragon kid's throat, and the disapproving look that would follow always made him feel bad about all his life choices.

He wasn't happy to be sitting in the airship's library, occupying a corner of what was colloquially known as The Nest. The stacks of books focusing on all things Fire Magic formed the walls, with ethereal shards of ice scattered here and there to keep everything structurally sound. He especially wasn't happy that his charge was ignoring him entirely in favour of reading the scroll he had procured from nowhere (and was he reading it _backwards_?), but after his spiteful attempt of setting the scroll on fire went South, he knew better than to complain.

No child had the right to be that strong. At least the ice and books had moved out of his way before he went sailing through them as well; one punctured wall was enough for his thoroughly abused backside, thank you very much.

And so it had been for almost two months. He would wake up, self-consciously eat his breakfast with the rest of his kin (sans Ultear) while his charge read the same scroll over and over and stole from his plate, avert his eyes and pretend not to notice the stares as he had his glass of alleged emergency fuel, and then follow the pink haired child he was legally allowed within twenty feet of to the library. The rest of the day would pass in silence, broken only by the occasional shuffling and the words of whoever it would be that day to bring him lunch and dinner, because beyond a simple hello at their initial meeting, Natsu had yet to utter a single word in his general direction.

He had been respected. He had been _feared_. He had been important to the story of the world, a player in whatever game he wanted in on; all of that significance had gone down the drain within a single day. A single minute. Perhaps even a single heartbeat. He couldn't even get up and go terrorise one of the nerds sharing the library with them; any noise he made would bring that thrice damned disapproving look down upon his head.

He didn't like feeling bad about himself. It wasn't in the natural order of being. Zancrow being cowed by a child was not supposed to have possible. Not even feasible.

Yet it had happened. And everyone who could have been asked on the topic would have reported that it was hilarious.

Zancrow heaved a sigh – silently, of course – as he reclined against the shelf behind him, the cracks in the ceiling proving themselves as continued unreliable entertainment and a waste of potential time passed. He hadn't even gotten a reason when first told he was to be keeping an eye on this child; there was very little that could make him ignore what his Guild Master told him to do. Hades' word was law, unless your name was Bluenote, but even if your name was Bluenote, you would constantly be walking on thin ice anyway so the advantage was more or less non-existent.

Zancrow blinked. The library came back into view. Natsu peeked up at him over the top of his scroll at his surprised snort, turning the long piece of paper upside a moment later to presumably start right back at the beginning.

It was finally happening. Boredom had found him. It was setting into his bones, liquefying his brains and frying his circuits. His eyes began to cross. His jaw slackened.

It was a desperate move. Foolish, and so very likely to backfire, but there was no other option. He had been fighting for eight weeks, four fortnights, and he was finally running out of steam. Reaching blindly, Zancrow used whatever strength left in his fingers to yank the object closer to him, flipping the hard front cover with enough force to bend it and willing his eyes to straighten out so he could take in the first words.

Hopeless situations ran rampant, solutions hiding in plain view with the disguise of disgust. The words flowed over Zancrow like a calming draught, his brain once again hardening and reshaping itself within his skull.

For the first time in his life, Zancrow had willingly chosen to read a book. Had he not just been a melodramatic and vexatious teenager ready to burst into tears of sheer monotony, it probably would have saved his life.

But he was, so it didn't.

But damn if it wasn't a good book though.

 **XxX**

Mistake. Noun. An act or judgment that is misguided or wrong.

Rustyrose had faith that he hadn't made a mistake. At the very same time, Rustyrose was confident that he had made the biggest mistake of his life.

Respectively, their names were Jellal and Erza. The mere emotions that had found themselves attached to those names were about as polarising as light and day. The fact that he would never see one without the other had been the cause of more than enough perplexity within his already overworked mind.

It didn't help that he would see them every day, after the task of actually teaching them how to do magic had fallen to him almost two months ago. Like a fool, he had readily agreed, a decision which had cut any restful sleep he may have had at night off at the source and replaced it with flashes of red hair whenever he closed his eyes.

Yes, it had almost been two months. That didn't mean Rustyrose had it in him to remember what day it was. Or week. Or month. There was no time to even check any calendar he would happen to walk past; even a second of inattention would result in something sharp being poked into his body, courtesy of the insane one eyed child whom he refused to refer to by name out of a menagerie of feelings, all wrapped together with a pretty pink bow of spite.

He was a bad person; of course he knew he was a bad person. Nobody ranked highly within the Darkest Guild in all of Fiore without doing a few things they weren't proud of. General apathy in the face of another person's pain was about as far as he could bring himself to care at the best of times, but did that really constitute this level of torture?

What he wouldn't give to merely have Jellal as an apprentice. Oh, Jellal; out of all the children who'd seen fit to intrude upon their airship in search of Ultear (and no offence to the woman, but Rustyrose couldn't fathom the fact that a group of somebodies had even seen fit to seek her out in the first place, though he had to appreciate that ghost child's tenacity), he was an angel. He would always listen, he would always do as he was told, and even though he'd only found and had subsequently been practicing his ideal fit of magic since less than three weeks ago, he was undeniably powerful.

There was only one glaring problem. And that problem was the girl who would follow him around at all hours of the day; the girl that he would indulge; the girl Jellal consistently chose above all else in his life, no matter how much effort was put into separating the two of them.

Now, maybe if he was to be generous to the universe, Rustyrose would admit that the animosity that had been steadily growing between himself and the former slave child was entirely his fault. Of course, he was one of the Seven Kin of Purgatory, the assassins, thieves, and warriors of soon to be legend. So what if he had thrown her out of an open window while they were hovering a few thousand metres above some unnamed island in the middle of the ocean? She had seen fit to stab him with a spoon which had still had some cereal on it (and could she even spell _infection_? Ew). She deserved everything she was given.

No, instead, the task of teaching her and her little boyfriend fell to him, a decision made after they'd finally managed to fish her out of the waves and the Dragon child had given him a look so disappointed that he had almost wanted to hunt down any relative that he would have been able to find and tell them that he was sorry for everything he had ever done.

Progress had been made. Progress had been made at a scary pace. If Jellal wasn't constantly wearing the expression of a scared bunny, Rustyrose would have assumed they were doing it on purpose.

From where she was standing – at the base of the spire Rustyrose had made for himself in order to be both physically and magically as far away from the children as possible – Erza sent him a saccharine sweet grin, which was only offset slightly by the missing teeth and the Re-Quipped sword she was jabbing suggestively in his direction. The numerous small dents and scrapes running the full length of his body throbbed as one, almost bringing him to his knees.

Why she was so focused on him when Azuma had tried blowing her up not two weeks ago was beyond him. The confusion didn't stop the overwhelming urge to curl up into a ball and cry until sunset.

No, what did stop that urge was Jellal ramming straight through his spire while covered in his thus far uncontrollable Meteor, the blue haired boy screaming apologies as he bounced across the top of the airship and plummeted over the edge.

Rustyrose hit the ground head first, the remains of his structure thankfully disintegrating before they could bury him. He would go on to swear from that day forth that his dorsal fin of a hairdo had spared him brain damage, and those within earshot of the story would later roll their eyes and shake their head when he inevitably started screaming at the sight of strawberry cheesecake.

…Hold on, wasn't he forgetting something right-

"Doink." A youthful, feminine voice whispered from somewhere above him.

Ahhh, pain.

 **XxX**

"Ultear wishes for me to inform you that if you do not officially move into your own room by nightfall, she will castrate you and feed you your own gonads with the same rusted spoon."

Gray glared sullenly up from where he was lying on the cold hard ground, half protruding from the mouth of a tent. One eye was swollen and blackened, a fact Hades acknowledged as he glanced over the suspicious red stain that Gray had apparently seen fit to cover with his face. "Considering your testicles are not currently a factor in any of my plans, and for the sake of all involved I hope they never shall be, I'm inclined to let her."

Gray continued to glare up at him, bottom lip ever so slightly jutting out. Hades shot a glance to the side as a sudden gust curled slightly around his face, the grumble that followed it echoing down the corridor. It was barely noticeable, a blip and smudge within an otherwise ordinary view, but those wisps were very hard to ignore once you conceded to the fact that you had actually noticed their presence.

Ghosts. He almost wanted to scoff at the mere thought. A boy who could communicate with and evidently bolster ghosts had ridden right into his hands on the back of a Dragon. And they had brought with them two of the largest raw ethernano reserves he had ever seen. So much power, so much potential, all within the hands of a group of fourteen year old children.

Or, at least the more impressive of the former slaves had claimed to be fourteen. The Dragon child, Natsu, hadn't said a single word to him since he'd arrived. The girl was prone to either rambling or unhinged laughter, while any questions asked of Gray were avoided like the plague. So, he had nothing to work with but teenaged.

He'd really hoped these days had been behind him. Apparently, no such luck.

"I just… I don't get it." Hades bit back a sigh as Gray's gaze shifted to the purple door, his index finger tapping out a random pattern on the ground below him. "Why won't she speak to me?"

He just had to recruit when they were on the cusp or trapped within the throes of puberty. Seven attempts later and he still hadn't learned his lesson. And he prided himself on his intelligence.

Still, that intelligence had already provided him options for continuing in this current situation. There was very obviously some form of connection between the two of them; he hadn't gleaned much helpful information when Ultear had confronted him on letting the young ice user into the Guild, that conversation had mostly been dedicated to her letting him know just how much she would hate him from now on until forever.

So, similarities. As far as he could see, there weren't any physically, so that ruled out relatives. A shame that one had to go early, Ultear wasn't known for being very happy with relatives. Incorrigible flirting could be added to the pile of unlikely, anger wasn't Ultear's regular response to such a thing. Had she been insufferably exasperated or sarcastic, he would have had his answer, but alas, that did not seem to be the crux of the matter.

Magic…

Gray used ice. Ultear had a natural affinity to the stuff. Enough to beat himself out by ways of knowledge and practice, which was certainly saying something about her competence. Hades had yet to see the boy in battle without the companionship of his spirits, and the sixth sense he'd developed over the hundred plus years he'd been around was telling him that it would certainly be a sight.

Perhaps a connection, but circumstantial at best. Hades didn't even bother trying to supress the sigh this time as he ambled towards the wall opposite the purple door and clambered down until he was sitting uncomfortably with his legs crossed. Never could he have been accused of being a bleeding heart (especially seeing as after the experimentation he had subjected himself to, his body didn't actually _have_ a heart anymore), and while that reputation could have happily gone on until the end of his days, the utter sadness in Gray's eyes spoke volumes to him.

Somehow, the boy knew Ultear. She may have even been the first person outside of his odd little quartet that he even wanted to associate with; the notion of having a tutor assigned to him had been denied. Vehemently. However long he'd been alone before that point; Hades wasn't privy to that knowledge, and he didn't need to be to draw those conclusions.

Two slaves. A Dragon. And a boy who spent more time around dead people than live people. Nobody who had somebody who cared about them joined a Dark Guild. No child who had led a life that didn't involve constant fighting had beyond a snowball's chance in Zancrow's mouth of even surviving a battle against the elites among his elites.

He didn't bother trying to justify anything to himself. That was a sucker's trap, the last kind Precht 'Hades' Gaebolg was about to let himself fall into.

"When I first came across Ultear, she had just escaped from a facility dedicated to magical research." Maybe he was a reminder of a bad memory. Maybe he was the child of one of the doctors who'd seen fit to experiment on her. The sooner he was able to understand at least a fraction of her circumstances, the sooner Gray would be able to put two and two together, whatever that would add up to. He wasn't about to let potential henceforth only seen in the Dragon boy stagnate over this; Ultear was valuable, her privacy far less so. "She had been abandoned by her parents-"

"That's a lie!"

Hades didn't jump at the sound of Gray's voice ringing out across the corridor, the fact that it had cracked about halfway through the proclamation detracted what little intimidation had been present. No, he was far more concerned with the esoteric pressure that was suddenly pressing down on his body, and the unimaginably frigid sensation that spread through his veins as easily as blood.

"Ur loved Ultear more than anything! She even hit Lyon when he tried saying otherwise!" The small red line that had been just underneath Gray's eye had been irritated, matching liquid seeping through his skin as he jumped to his feet. Hades made an attempt to take a breath, to explain that he had only been repeating what he had been told, when whatever was restricting him decided to push down harder, knocking all the oxygen he had just gathered out of his reach. "Ur would never abandon anyone! She even kept me after finding out I could see ghosts!"

Well, at least now he had his connection.

"I…I found her diary once, a few months before she died, and I read it." Magic pulsed through the corridor, calling stalagmites from the floor and chasing off those who were poking their heads from their barracks to watch. Swiping a hand over his eyes and subsequently spreading blood across his face, Gray sniffed, forcing it to morph into an unconvincing cough halfway through. "She had been told that Ultear was dead, that they tried to help her any way they could. It was difficult to read, the page was all torn up and crinkled…"

From behind the purple door, something thumped, as though it had been dropped. Feeling the pressure let off his ribs, Hades pushed himself back to his feet, his mind alight with a voice not unlike what he recalled Mavis to sound like. It was saying some not very nice things about him.

"Ultear's all I have of Ur, but she never even got to meet her properly. I just wanted to talk to her, see if there was anything she wanted to say when I finally manage to find Ur again." Gray's eyes fell to the ground as something akin to a whine reverberated from above Hades' head. Reaching out a hand, Gray stroked the air in front of him, cutting off the intangible noise halfway through. "Maybe I could tell Ultear some stories, so she would at least know what her mother was really like. I… I guess that was really stupid of me, huh? Maybe I should have listened to Natsu instead of making him drag me over the continent."

Had appearances not been essential, Hades would have rammed his head directly into the wall. Volatile emotions never ended well. The last thing he needed on his hands was a ridiculously powerful, moody child with a fifty meter, overprotective, _invisible_ guard dog whom seemed perfectly in tune with his master's emotions.

"How did you come to be injured?" It wasn't a particularly good deflection of the current subject, but it would have to suffice. At the very least, it beat out deploying the Guild Master card to force cooperation; only a moron would abuse a position of power like that so brazenly, when throwing off balance to utilise a segue into another subject would work just as well without the pointless accrue of negativity aimed towards him.

Gray's eyebrow notched upwards, the boy twisting to face a nearby window and squinting at his reflection. Spotting the cut running across his face, he dabbed at it with a finger, his eyebrows furrowing as the digit came back painted red.

"Uh… Meredy when she kicked me earlier, I guess." Hades glanced at the ceiling in an attempt to hide the eye roll that he just hadn't been able to stop. Meredy, there was another mystery that was living right under his nose. He didn't even know how the girl had managed to get on the airship in the first place, and he had even less information regarding where Ultear had gotten her from.

The initial reason he had decided to keep her around were her first words. They had worked for comedic relief; something the airship was through and through starved of. That wouldn't stop the talk he would have to have with her; violence was only the answer about half the time, and he drew the line at blood in the corridors. Bruises? Fine. Stains? Less fine.

"Go to the infirmary and have that looked at. I shall speak to Ultear, but if she says no, then you are to drop this subject until such a time that she feels ready to breach it. Is that understood?"

There would come a time when Gray and Ultear would be assigned the same objective. Maybe one could ignore the other and they would be fine, maybe one would ignore the other and both would end up in the same shallow ditch. Hades was not about to lose two lives over something like this, especially not when so much promise had been shown.

Regardless, there was plenty of time before something like that could happen. It would be a few years yet before anything big was set to occur, Caprico and Kain could handle the heavy lifting until then.

That didn't mean he couldn't nip this one in the bud.

Hades didn't need to see more than Gray's nod to know that his words had been heeded. The footsteps echoing away and the supernatural potency dissipating sufficed just fine as Hades turned to Ultear's door, mentally counting back from five as Gray disappeared around the corner. The many experiences he had repairing bridges that had been burned back when he was half his current age wasn't something that seemed to fade with time, for better or for worse.

Makarov's group had been especially rowdy. Considering their heritage, he never found that to be very surprising. Wrapped up in memories of a simpler time as he was, Hades almost missed the noise of the door before him rolling open, his attention snapping back to the present as he took in the state of the girl in front of him.

He could say for certain that he had never actually seen Ultear cry. Until that moment, at the very least.

He had also never seen a blue haired boy fall past a window from inside an airship through a mirror hanging above a crying girl's head, pausing in his flailing and screaming for a moment to smile and wave as he plummeted past, but apparently today was a day for firsts.

 **XxX**

As if I was going to end this on a note other than happy, funny or silly. Where is this story going, you may ask? I have absolutely no idea, but getting there is going to be fun.

'Till next time!

 _ **X**_


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** From midnight to half past six in the morning I worked on this. I regret basically everything, but also nothing. I think I've stumbled upon Nirvana.

* * *

Warnings: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Trace amounts of Angst, Likely juvenile levels of humour, No Bashing, Ghosts, Nonsense. Keep out of reach of children.

Pairings: [Currently] N/A

Story Recommendation: Fairy Tail; Meeting Against Fate; by Kyogre

* * *

Natsu is a quiet boy turned dragon turned boy, who doesn't quite understand life outside his numerous scrolls. Erza's smile is bright enough to blind all to her unhealthy obsession of all things that go stab. Gray is relatively normal, when he isn't talking to ghosts or arguing with his strange tattoo. Jellal is… Jellal. Lucy is an heiress to an arguably criminal empire who accidentally stumbled into this mess and is content to stay; at least, when she isn't putting out spot-fires or trying to convince Happy that he is not, in fact, the next incarnation of the Devil.

* * *

"I don't think you've been entirely truthful with me, Mister Gaebolg."

Hades stared dispassionately from his throne as the blond man that had found his way in front of him took a long drag of his cigar, the toxic smoke curling around the ridiculous bowler's hat settled upon his nest of blond hair and hopefully doing its part to send him to an early grave. The man's white suit was impeccable, attire for a person whom had never worked an honest [or legal] day in their life. Flanking both his sides were what could only be described as two gorillas in matching suits and sunglasses, the rifles they were toting so large and conspicuous that there was no chance they were not compensating for something.

"This annum's percentile market range for criminal behaviour has steadily increased over these past months, and more than one of my boys have been complaining about budget cuts." The man's voice was a very convincing rendition of a racial stereotype with his throat and balls caught in a vice. From his pocket emerged a jewel encrusted dagger, which Hades found waved in his direction in a way that was probably supposed to be construed as threatening. It looked like the man didn't actually know which end to hold and which end to stab with. "I hope you haven't been trying to cheat me, my dear business associate. I would be very upset if that were the case."

One of Hades' hands curled into his Bullet Magic stance, before he forced it to relax. Yes, he may have been forced to delay this meeting for five minutes while his associate attempted to light the wrong end of his cigar, but the man's literal mountain of money would be invaluable to whatever plans he may have had in the future. That didn't mean he had to like him, or even tolerate him.

In an attempt to clear away some of the building resentment, Hades instead shifted his gaze to the young girl the blond man had entered the room with. She had instantly gravitated towards the wall as soon as she had the chance, and was currently hiding behind a Grimoire Heart member who had been tasked that morning with guard duty. Both of them looked distinctly uncomfortable, probably for different reasons.

It had been years since he had seen the girl; he actually hadn't ever been introduced to her, not that it was necessary considering her mother had looked identical at that age.

"Jude, may I inquire why you have decided to bring your daughter with you today?"

Jude Heartfilia narrowed his eyes, staring up at the Guild Master with what could have been an indignant expression. The guard on his left raised his guy eagerly, before catching the guard on Jude's right shaking his head slowly. The gun was lowered with a pout. "Lucy only just turned fourteen, Precht. Are you suggesting that I should have left her home alone, surrounded by the scum that works for me?" Jude brought the cigar to his lips; at least, he went to raise the cigar and it slipped out of his fingers. The hand followed the action through seamlessly, ending up with Jude scratching at a cheek that everyone knew wasn't itchy in the first place. "Are you trying to tell me that you believe me to be… irresponsible?"

The two guards gasped, glancing around the room quickly before covering their mouths. Jude fished another cigar out of his suit, glaring upwards as he miraculously managed to light it.

Hades' sigh was as loud and obnoxious as he could manage. Considering he had just laid witness to the man attempting to bait him set his own hat on fire and stick the burning end of a cigar into his mouth in the same action, that was pretty damn loud and obnoxious.

At this point, he may as well have extended an invitation for the Rune Knights to enter his ship. He was allowing every other idiot on board these days, after all.

"Pardon me a moment." Jude was too busy rolling around on the ground and getting his skull stomped on by his two bodyguards to hear him. Hades shook his head, cupping his hands over his mouth and tilting his chin upwards ever so slightly. "GRAY!"

The effect was immediate. The ground shook with the resonating footsteps and something made its way through the metal ship, the walls quaking and freezing everyone in their stances. A tingle shot through Hades' myocardium; a sure sign that he would have to reinforce that corridor a little further while the Fantastic Four (name pending) were calling his ship their home.

"Gaebolg!" There wasn't much a figurehead of the Balam Alliance usually found funny enough to laugh at. The stress of their job, combined with the shit they had to deal with day in and day out made it very difficult to find the humour in any situation. That being said, Hades wouldn't deny that the sight of Jude huddled on the ground, bruises all over his head and his two guards circling him and pointing their ridiculously sized guns in every plausible direction managed to coax a snort out of him. "What is this treachery!"

"That…" A massive shadow eclipsed the doorway, stretching so far into the room that it managed to bath the Grimoire member who had been standing there entirely in darkness. Why she was trying to hold back what appeared to be laughter was anyone's guess. "Would be my eight Kin of Purgatory."

A foot appeared in the doorway, and immediately all foreign weapons were trained on it. Following that foot was the body of a teenage male, albeit one covered in odd markings and accompanied by what very well could have been a celestial drumbeat that was making the room shiver.

"Yo."Gray gestured in a way that could have been either dismissive or in greeting, slipping his hands into the pockets on his pants as his tattoo receded from his bare chest to curl in on itself on his forearm. "'Ora reckons you should move the lights in the hallway, something about them always sending the wrong message. Dunno what he's talking about, it all looks fine to me."

"I'll consider it." Hades wouldn't, but now he could say that he had and merely decided against the suggestion after some careful deliberation and nobody could call him out on it. With a sweeping gesture that was, in hindsight, rather unnecessary, the Guild Master redirected his young charge's attention to the only other person in the room his age, both doing a brilliant job in ignoring the automatic firearms that had yet to leave their intended target. "This is Lucy Heartfilia. I want you to accompany her for the duration of her stay on this ship, and ensure nothing harmful befalls her."

Hades neglected to mention his personal views of having children on his airship. Considering the circumstances, it would likely end up being rather counterproductive.

Gray glanced at the girl in question, turning back and cocking an eyebrow in Hades' direction. Rather than respond in kind, Hades scowled, sending one of those expressions that demanded compliance that could only be perfected after years of trial and error. That, and a healthy margin of violence. Gray's other eyebrow rose to join the first at the challenge, his mouth pressed into a firm line as he accepted and started something which he couldn't possibly win.

Alas, it just wasn't meant to be, for after that moment the girl stepped forward, hesitant and unsure but still committed. Gray's stare broke when she introduced herself in tones too low for Hades to hear, a sigh that bordered on being a groan leaving his lips before he turned around and gestured for her to follow.

One of these days, the social butterfly that had been growing inside the child would blossom and desecrate the awkward husk that had once been its cage. Until then he would just have to suffer, because he was young and the young were resilient. Unlike Hades, who was old and frail and likely senile.

"I do not agree to this."

"Stiff." Hades' hand curled up again, the tips of his index and middle fingers beginning to glow. Now there were no children in the room, he need not worry about censoring himself for their sakes. The guns were instantly on him, and Hades had just roll his eyes before they were falling to their wielder's feet as mounds of dust. "Now get to the crux of the matter and get off my ship before I shoot you."

The cigar came close to falling out of Jude's mouth as he gaped like a fish, which probably had something to do with the fact that both of his entourage were now hiding behind him. He recovered admirably enough, shaking his head and clicking his fingers, his partially ruined bowler hat falling off his head and crumbling to dust as it hit the floor.

"I wish to hire some of your operatives for the foreseeable future, and I come bearing a gift." The tone was professional, belied only by the way Jude had to kick his guards into action and direct them with harsh whispers that were probably supposed to have been inaudible. The egg that had appeared in a flash of Re-Quip Magic was white with strange blue markings, and apparently heavy enough to warrant the two of them struggling as they carried it to the stairs and set it down.

"In order to bolster your ranks and strengthen our professional relationship, I present you with what I believe to be…" Jude paused for dramatic effect, shooting an annoyed glare at his guards as they staggered back into position, both breathing heavily and effectively ruining the ambiance that he seemed to believe had, but really actually hadn't, been established, "…a Dragon egg!"

Hades took one look at the egg that supposedly held a gestating Dragon before deciding he wasn't about to be dealing with this shit.

"NATSU!"

 **XxX**

Lucy was confused.

When the maid that had been assigned to the portion of the mansion that her room was in had come to fetch her that morning, all she had been was resigned. Changing into clothes that could pass as proper attire and making her way past the numerous guards had taken her all the time she'd had to spare that morning, arriving in the dining room only to receive a scolding glare from her father and to have her hand taken by a man she'd never seen before.

She had blinked, and the mansion had been replaced by metal walls and unfriendly faces, the most intimidating of which was sitting atop a throne and staring down at her with the scariest neutral glance she had ever felt directed at her in her life.

The wall had been the spot she was most comfortable with. It was where she could make herself the smallest; as far away from the man she could barely even refer to as her father. She recognised the situation well enough; he hadn't wanted her coming along because he wanted to spend time with her on her birthday, he wanted her to come along because after the last kidnapping attempt, he no longer trusted any of his staff.

After all, if the butler who'd served them loyally for the last decade could try to make off with her for a quick payday, who else would? Perhaps she should have been happy that he at least cared enough to keep her in his sight… and she would have been, had he not admitted to her face at the beginning of her classes in self-defense that she couldn't expect any ransom to be paid.

She would take over the empire one day, she couldn't afford to be weak. That had been his reasoning, as far as it would go after losing all reason as a consequence to her mother's death. Keeping her head down had become the norm, well out of the way of repercussions born of her father's rapidly thinning and gradually more explosive temper.

It had never been turned on her. But it could be.

The territory was obviously hostile. Populated by allies who could just as easily turn about and become enemies, in the middle of the sky, too high up to even survive a fall into deep water. The corridors were more than viable to become a confusing maze in the event of a panic, all the while with her father agreeing that two men would be enough because apparently the Guild Master of Grimoire Heart was 'getting weak'. Recruiting children, so it had been said.

It was impressive, the amount of information you could overhear when nobody ever payed attention to you.

Wandering a corridor with her guide, Lucy could see that yes, the claims were indeed true. What hadn't been talked was the pressure that followed this boy around, or the strange looks he would receive whenever walking past someone. It was an expression she had been many times being directed at people her father would meet with, a healthy mixture of fear and respect that told her all she needed to know.

All she received was mild curiosity or simple indifference, a comforting familiarity. Had it not been for the metal walls, she may as well have never left the mansion.

Out of nowhere, Gray spun on his heel, the movement so sudden that his left knee wasn't even given the time to rotate. A sickening crack filled the hallway, black lines rushing down Gray's arm as he marched unabashed back along the way they had come, snagging Lucy's elbow as he passed and dragging her along with him.

"Why didn't you tell me it was your birthday?" Gray's leg snapped back around so it was facing the correct direction in between steps, his pace not faltering for a moment. Too thrown by the change in events to react, Lucy soon found herself in a room she hadn't noticed walking past on her fast trek through the corridors; a large dome with an assortment of pots, pans and cutlery hanging from the walls. Above those were a circle of cupboards that didn't appear to be in reach for anybody aboard the ship; above _those_ was a full glass ceiling, some of the panels having been removed to presumably allow air into the room.

"…Pardon?" Always be polite in front of new potential associates, that had been one of the only lessons she'd bothered to retain. Apparently, it made it all the more disconcerting when you did decide to pull the weapons out, but really, it was just good manners.

"Your ghost was talking to my ghost, and she said it was your birthday." Lucy blinked up at the boy, drawing a complete blank. Ghosts? Was that some sort of magic? Was she locked in a room with a crazy person? It would still be an improvement over the crippling loneliness of her home life if she was, but at least at home she had the option of finding someone to talk to. Herself, for example. "Why didn't you say anything? I thought normal people loved bragging about stuff like that."

Gray turned to the empty air beside her before she could even try to articulate an answer, his left eyebrow rising as the scowl he had been wearing since they'd been introduced to each other slowly deepened. A few seconds passed before he had moved again, this time over to a set of doors Lucy hadn't noticed before now, muttering what sounded suspiciously like her family name followed closely by several colourful choices of vulgarity.

"...Ghost?" A massive white hat towered over them from Gray's head as the boy moved once more, this time to a fridge that had melted out of the wall after he kicked what must have been the activation panel. He was moving too fast for her to keep up; his train of thought was on an entirely different track. His train of thought was probably using an entirely different fuel source.

Gray shot a glance over his shoulder, the chef's hat falling onto his face and obscuring both of his eyes from view. It had been for a split second, but Lucy felt her pulse quicken as she registered what she had seen in those dark irises.

Something she couldn't recognise. Something that meant he wasn't afraid, that maybe he cared enough to actually look in her direction and notice her existence. Being surrounded by only her father's inner circle for as long as she had, she couldn't remember the last time that had ever happened.

Actually, she could. It would have been a few years ago, on the sixth day of the seventh month.

"Yeah, you've got a ghost following you around. She looks exactly like you, 'cept older." Had Gray not looked away before readjusting his hat, he would have seen Lucy's mouth fall open, her eyes as wide as they could go as she rounded on the spot Gray had been glaring at not a minute prior. "Oi, Erza!"

One of the cupboards overhead burst open, Lucy probably only noticing due to it being directly in her line of sight. From the wooden depths came a cloud of multi-coloured confetti, followed closely by a scarred face, adorned with a toothy grin that was missing a tooth and topped off with flowing scarlet hair. The girl, presumably Erza, waved down happily to Lucy, the grin losing some of its width as she shifted her gaze to Gray and cocked her head.

"You called?"

"Yep." Lucy felt a hand alight her shoulder, and suddenly she was tugged backwards, falling against a lean chest and blinking her currently unseeing eyes. Her brain was taking a moment to reboot after the shocks to her system, a smart move. "This is Lucy. Today is Lucy's birthday, but nobody is throwing Lucy a party. Lucy doesn't even have a cake."

Erza gasped theatrically, almost falling out of the cupboard as she stared down at the duo with an expression that somehow successfully mixed together horror and sympathy.

Lucy didn't even know anymore.

"Erza, I need you to gather the Kin. The bridge is occupied, so I'll need you to vacate one of the rec rooms while I put together the food." Lucy felt something hit the back of her knees, forcing them to buckle and send her into a surprisingly comfortable chair. Gray had somehow managed to lose his shirt in the few seconds he was out of her sight, his chest now covered with an apron sporting the request for a certain point of his body to be serviced. The communication Lacrima in her pocket – given to her by one of her father's goons with the instruction to never hesitate answering it whenever it rung – chose that moment to go off, and for the first time, she chose to ignore it.

As did everyone else in the room, apparently.

With a jaunty salute and what appeared to be tears in her eyes, Erza ducked back into the cupboard, the door thudding shut behind her. In between the crackling of numerous kitchen appliances growing out of the metal plating surrounding them like an odd mould, Lucy could have sworn she could hear humming moving through the walls behind her.

Meh, add it to the pile.

 **XxX**

Hades rubbed his forehead, fruitlessly attempting to head off the migraine before it could form.

"Gray, I want you to explain the situation to me again, but this time, I want you to use _very_ small words."

"We're stealing Lucy."

Hades rubbed harder. It wasn't working.

"I understood that portion of the explanation." It was about the only part of the discussion he had fully understood so far. Not that he'd had much faith in said conversation when Gray had decided to initiate it while wearing what appeared to be a colourful traffic cone on his head. "Now please get to _why_ you have kidnapped the daughter of a mob boss."

"Lucy doesn't like living with her dad and none of us can think of a reason why she shouldn't live here instead."

Hades covered his eyes with his hands, not even trying to hide the groan as he shifted forward in his seat. There were plenty of reasons he could think of as to why the blond child shouldn't have been allowed on his ship, the only problem was that none of them were valid.

She had raw magic power, waiting to be tapped into. She was polite. Her addition would bring something new.

But she was a _child_. Screw logic, he didn't want another child on board his ship! He was just starting to learn his lesson after the first dozen times!

"Jude will not allow this to stand." The discussion had only just started and he was already scraping the bottom of the barrel for excuses. Both of them knew it.

The wall throbbed as someone turned up the parties' music. A shiver ran through the ground, carried from one side of the ship all the way to the other and bringing with it the laughter of children.

Hades had never hated a sound more, not when nothing else had ever been synonymous with a defeat this swift and grand.

"Tell me why I should go through with this." He'd essentially already said yes. He had no self-control. He was going to hurt someone if he didn't stop soon. Probably himself, his head felt like it was about to burst already.

"Just throw him overboard." The sight of Heartfilia disappearing into the blue abyss brought a smile to Hades' face. The kind of smile that could only usually be brought about when thinking of his plans and how the planet would look after ninety percent of the population had been wiped from it. "The only person keyed into the anti-teleportation runes is a member of the Guild anyway, so what's he even supposed to do?"

Hades remained silent, his expression blank while his mind worked furiously to come up with a solution. This was ridiculous; HE was the leader of this Guild, the only corners he could be back into were the corners he himself had built. On the one hand, it was ethically questionable, on the other, her idiot father had just tried to bargain with him using an egg.

"I know this is really sudden and everything, but Lucy's dad treats her like an object." Gray toed the ground, staring resolutely at the wall. Hades calmed his mind to the best of his ability and cocked an eyebrow; this sounded like a secret that wasn't explicitly stated to be a secret but if you read in between the lines then it would totally be a secret. If Gray was telling him and acting uncomfortable about it, then that meant he was serious in his conviction. It was odd how quickly he could become attached to someone; then again, when he was a teenager Hades had been a part of a whole circle of friends, so perhaps he just didn't have the necessary experience. "She doesn't even know if he loves her, but… she doesn't love him. She just had nowhere else to go, and she doesn't want to be a criminal!"

"…This is a _Dark_ Guild." The top Dark Guild on the continent, if he did say so himself.

"It's the lesser of two evils, and the only choice she's got." The headache was starting to get annoying. Only painful when it was focused on, but enough of a presence to demand attention all the same. Gray's eyes were on him once more, and Hades found his mind made up in that moment, much to his annoyance. "Please let her stay?"

"…If she is to stay, she is expected to earn her keep." Gray perked up, an odd rumbling filling the room for a moment. It almost sounded like an enormous being purring; Hades didn't even blink, used to the presence of a dead Deliora whenever he would come across Gray. It had started as a passing observation, but he was now quite certain that there wasn't actually anywhere Gray went where Deliora didn't follow. What that said about the two of them, he hadn't the foggiest. "That means she must become proficient with the usage of her keys, which I will task as a joint effort between the entirety of your little group. Dismissed."

Gray nodded up at him happily before taking off out of the room, no doubt to return to the party. Now alone with his darkness, Hades sunk back in his throne, his elbow brushing against a plate and almost sending it plummeting to the ground.

Five seconds of silence and two blinks passed before he grabbed the fork and took a bite of the cake.

Mmm, strawberry.

"If I have to let more children on board my ship…" He vowed to himself in the darkness, his grip around the fork tightening, "…then they will stay in easy to herd groups."

 **XxX**

So, is this site being really weird for anyone else, or is it just me? Not allowing me to upload new documents, no matter what writing program I use? I hope it's not just me.

Lucy has joined the fray! Now we just need Happy and I can start considering what the plot of the story should actually be. Fun fun fun...

Till next chapter!

 _ **X**_


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** That... that war arc, man. It's been... yeah. It has definitely yeah.

Little timeskip forward because writing teenagers is easier than writing children, especially when the children are weird.

* * *

Warnings: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Trace amounts of Angst, Likely juvenile levels of humour, No Bashing, Ghosts, Zombies, Nonsense. Keep out of reach of children.

Pairings: [Currently] N/A

Story Recommendation: Fairy Tail; Meeting Against Fate; by Kyogre

* * *

Natsu is a quiet boy turned dragon turned boy, who doesn't quite understand life outside his numerous scrolls. Erza's smile is bright enough to blind all to her unhealthy obsession of all things that go stab. Gray is relatively normal, when he isn't talking to ghosts or arguing with his strange tattoo. Jellal is… Jellal. Lucy is an heiress to an arguably criminal empire who accidentally stumbled into this mess and is content to stay; at least, when she isn't putting out spot-fires or trying to convince Happy that he is not, in fact, the next incarnation of the Devil.

* * *

Grimoire Heart was a Dark Guild.

Of that, Gray had never any doubts. Perhaps in the beginning, he had been too narrow-minded or ignorant to the world around him to notice, but in the beginning he'd still been getting used to having regular human contact back once more, even if part of it did come in the form of a boy who spent half the time as a Dragon.

More to the point, by his own volition, Gray had found himself surrounding by what many would have labelled the grimmest of sentience. Another drop of liquid in a sea of evil, another particle that fought to rise above and drown the regular folk. The tattoo he wore on his chest with neither pride not shame was the mark of a criminal, the evidence of the morals that he had discarded for the sake of his goals.

Or at least, that's what everyone else seemed to believe.

Personally, Gray didn't really care either way.

Maybe it was just due to the collection of screws that had loosened over his comparatively short lifespan, maybe it was the result of seeing and conversing with dead people on a regular basis, maybe the how wasn't even all that important. Black and white were all people, even some of those who he now lived with, seemed capable of seeing.

The number of sins in their world was innumerable. New grievances were committed to the minute, paragons of justice fraught with damage to any integrity they had been built upon. He'd hurt people, everyone had hurt people, but at least he hadn't just managed to set a new record of collateral damage in a single month by a million jewels. At least he didn't spend every waking moment making the lives of people already being overworked even harder, no matter how little their lives mattered to him on a personal level.

There was a reason that his Master would grumble under his breath about the top legal Guild on the continent they were consistently hovering over. If Fairy Tail, with their collective political nuance and utter disregard for anybody around them could be considered a shining beacon by many, what grounds did they have to stand on to accuse a teenager who wasn't even old enough to drive the airship of being evil?

The world was a mad, mad place. Mixing colour and shade until all that was left was a murky grey, painting the landscapes and decorating the atmosphere and blinding all those who refused to see beyond the invisible of dark and light. Perhaps it was ignorance, perhaps it was desperation. Or perhaps, as Gray was finding out, the world knew exactly what it was talking about.

Because he had just found the ultimate evil.

And it was definitely the sick fuck that had made this chef's hat.

Gray had been on this airship for years. He'd dragged aboard three witnesses that would testify that. He was typically the one who would be in charge of meals when it came to his group. Every time he made his way into the kitchen, he would put on the same hat. The man who had worn it before him had done so religiously, evidenced by the instinct of knowing which spice went in what whenever it was adorning his head, and the murderous glare the old man standing against the wall would constantly give him whenever he put it on.

A murderous glare Gray returned with equal, if not more intent, keeping his head tilted _just_ so in order to stop the hat from falling over his eyes. The hat that kept growing with him even through the sixteenth and half of the seventeenth years of his life. The hat that had caused so many burnt hands, so many ruined dishes, so much sacrificed epidermis to preserve pride and spite, _so much spite_.

Three and a half years of spite, if he were to be a tiny bit more specific, all of which reared its ugly head as the elderly ghost snorted and crossed his arms. "Thief."

The hat slipped as Gray held out a hand, sacrificing his vision in favour of holding out a hand to halt Deliora's advance. If it was a fight the former head chef of Grimoire Heart's airship wanted, then it was a fight Gray was going to give him. "Finders keepers, cun-"

"You have been granted your obligatory thirty minutes to glare at the wall, mortal!" Eyelids, hands, neck muscles, cheek, eyeball, fingers, and surrounding air all twitching in unison, Gray tore the hat off his head, the look on his face descending a few degrees further than absolute zero as he gazed down at he who had dared speak. With all the authority that his shrill voice could muster, Happy slammed the salad fork he had somehow been born holding against the table before him, making the most adorable little ringing noise anyone within earshot had ever heard.

"F̴͢͏̢͠E̴̕҉̡E͠҉̨D͏̧͏ ̶̢̢Ţ͠͝Ó҉ ͢҉͜M̵̕E̴̶͜ ̶̶͝T̢̢̀͘͡Ḩ̷̕͞Ȩ͏͏ ҉̸̛͝M̷̢͘͢Ù̸̡̢̡Ŗ̴͡D́͏̢̀E̶̢͟Ŕ̷̵͠E̸̛͜D҉ ̷̴̀̕D҉͏́͘͜E͢͠Ń̛͘͝I̴͜͡Z͠͞E̢͝N̢͡͠҉Ś̡ ̶̡́͟͠Ơ̸͢F̶͟҉͝͡ ̵̀A̷̧N̵͘͟O̢̨͟͟T̨͏͘͢Ḩ̕͢͞E̸͢͡Ŕ̵̛͡ ͢͡͞W̧͡O͝͠͠Ŗ͟Ļ̵̡͟Ḑ̸́̀͢!̵"

Natsu didn't even look up from his scroll as everyone else took a very conspicuous step away from the adorable blue ball of fuzz and angelic love. To this day it is still unknown how those who had been seated managed such a thing.

"Fish. He wants fish."

"…We're on a-" A salad fork jabbed itself into the ice that had rushed to coat Gray's throat, throwing up a shower of sparks that managed to flash-fry the eggs in the pan behind him to ash. And the wall. And the pants of the unfortunate bystander whom had been standing in the adjacent room. "…Fine. Fish for breakfast."

"Hon hon hon!" The elderly ghost in the corner said rather than laughed, for the sole purpose of mocking him. He hadn't actually made that noise, but the borderline racism made Gray feel better about the situation he was in.

Turning around slowly, Gray stuck his index finger up his nose to the knuckle, pulling it out with a sound akin to a bottle-cap buckling under the pressure of a deep sea trench. The sheer unexplainable size of what came with it caused the ghost to choke on the air that it wasn't able to breathe anyway, that shock turning to apoplectic rage as Gray very deliberately wiped his finger clean with the hat on his head, staring the elderly ghost dead in the eye as he tripped over a carton that had been left on the ground and fell face-first into the sink.

Ignoring the black lines that slapped his nose back into proper alignment, Gray cleaned the last of his declaration of war from his fingers with a liberal blast of highly concentrated water, accepting the whole cod that had been floating towards him and positioning it on his shoulder much like a caveman would a club. Deliora retreated to his corner, not trying in the slightest to be inconspicuous as he stuck a foot out and launched the elderly ghost through the hole that had been burned in the wall.

Judging from the elderly ghost-shaped hole in the _next_ wall, he hadn't been very gentle.

"Ooh, ooh! I wanna, uh, feast on the unborn!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Gray watched as Lucy leaned as far away from Erza as she could manage. From the corner of his other eye, he watched as Ultear and Meredy fell through the open doorway, the orb they had been using to look into the room (by holding it around the corner and looking at the reflection) rolling through both holes that had been made in walls that morning and out of sight.

They were already gone by the time he had blinked in an attempt to actually focus his vision on them. Shame.

He was already heading for the fridge when he heard Jellal's tired voice. The poor guy sounded like he hadn't had a decent night's rest in the years they had been a part of the Guild. Whether that was a result of Erza deciding one day to sleep in his room and then never making the choice to leave or not, Gray didn't know, nor did he want to.

"Eggs. She wants eggs."

* * *

Azuma's head poked in through the second hole that had been made that morning, his eyes briefly moving about to survey it before he cleared his throat.

"Your group is on grocery duty today. We'll be moving location in a few hours, so you may want to hurry."

Gray frowned as he finished cleaning the last of the dirty dishes, using the hat atop his head to wipe his hands dry. "Why?"

Azuma didn't bother turning around as a distant cry of rage met his ears. It was easier to just ignore everything from the get-go. "Because half of you are creepy as fuck, you keep breaking shit, and barely anybody actually likes having to live with you."

"Hey, that hole's because of a ghost! You can't pin that on us!"

It was with a grand total of three blank blinks that Azuma stood as still as a statue, the direction he had been facing never shifting as he moved out of their view.

 **XxX**

There were an alarmingly high number of ghosts in this town.

Gray winced as Jellal passed through yet another ghost that had come to a complete stop, the transparent girl's forehead only barely reaching the blue-haired teen's hips. Such an act would typically cause some small form of discomfort on both parties' behalf, and yet the child didn't so much as blink, not even when Jellal's foot caught on a rock that didn't actually exist and caused him to stumble. The younger ghosts usually loved playing that prank. There would always be some form of disappointment when one would charge at Gray from wherever, only for him to sidestep at the last second.

Natsu, far more observant than the other four accompanying them, had noticed Gray's trepidation within a few minutes of entering the town; the scroll that nobody had ever managed to take from his hands had been tucked away, and he walked down the street with his head held high, eyes darting back and forth in an attempt to keep everything in sight. It had taken Lucy a few streets before she fallen into step less than an arm's length from the Dragon Slayer, and another couple of steps before Happy had alighted the boy's head, jabbing his fork viciously at anyone who had the sheer audacity to look in their direction.

Jellal had caught Gray's eye two shops ago, and received a grimace in reply. Erza appeared completely oblivious, if one could ignore the grip she had on the hilt of her sword, her knuckles having long since turned white.

None of them could actually see what they were walking through. Perhaps every now and then a stone would be missing from the path, a house would be missing a window or have attained some other such negligible damage. Nobody who was alive and crossing their path gave any indication that something was awry, going about their days like the only distraction was the odd teenagers currently marching towards the market district.

But the sheer amount of death… _recent_ death…

Gray stumbled as another ghost rose out of the ground before him. Years of conditioning had dulled the shock of their sudden appearances until it simply decided to not show up in the first place, but typically ghosts weren't missing half of their skulls. Typically he couldn't see their _brains_.

The ghost didn't acknowledge him, didn't laugh or apologise. A blank expression encompassed what was left of his face, he drifted through Gray and grazed against Natsu's arm, the Fire Mage no doubt feeling the shiver that ran down Gray's spine as he reached out to steady him.

"This place stinks," Natsu muttered under his breath, holding his free arm up in order to bury his nose into the crook of his elbow.

With crawling skin, Gray rolled his sleeves up, giving anybody on the street a free view of the tattoo that was busy curling up and down both his arms and, presumably, the rest of his body. A second shiver ran down his spine, his breath coming out of his mouth as a fine mist.

The person that had been walking past leapt a good foot away from the group. Everyone else on the street turned as one to stare at them.

"Zeroth doesn't like it too much either."

The sun disappeared behind a cloud. In a unanimous line, those the shadow touched paused and glanced into the sky, only moving once the light was once again upon them. A child that had been running after her friends came to a screeching halt beside them; the tattoo running rampant across Gray's skin visibly pulsed outwards, dropping the body that had once belonged to the little ghost that Gray had watched Jellal walk through less than a minute prior.

The little girl turned to dust.

Someone shrieked.

It was Jellal.

 **XxX**

For the first time in what felt like years, Hades could have passed for being fully at peace.

He had no idea what it was. Just waking up that morning had been the most enjoyable experience in his century and a bit of lifetime. Breakfast had set the bar even higher, and the rest of the day just climbed from there.

Three people had gotten an extra week of vacation time. Nobody got yelled at when another hole was blown in another wall. It was a bliss he hadn't known existed, a bliss that had probably been beaten out of him by the world when he was still young and optimistic about the chances of humanity.

Nothing could bring him down from this unexplained high. It was an impossible task, a fool's errand to try.

If only he had remembered that there was currently a collection of children living right under his nose that seemed dedicated to making the impossible happen.

Speaking of, they were such a lovely group, now that they weren't children. Technically, in the eyes of the law and doting parents they still would have been children, but the line got blurred after the first hundred years of living. If someone wasn't a child to him, they were probably dust, so if he treated everyone like an adult, then he would never allow anybody insight to this train of thought, lest they usurp his Guild from underneath him and force him into some form of asylum.

His plan to kill all the non-magical folks was perfectly sane, no matter what Gray said about the blond guy hovering over his shoulder that always rolled his eyes when it was brought up!

Something in his pocket buzzed. Humming a jaunty tune, Hades retrieved the communications Lacrima from his pocket, his whistling picking up in pitch as one of the little ones that had been in his thoughts' photos flashed across the small screen.

Ah, Gray. The child was likely a little bit insane, and extremely good at practical jokes if this entire ghost thing fell through, but the loyalty he could showcase once someone had earned it was absolutely astonishing. His eyes made him appear somewhat dead inside, true; the news that Ultear did not, in fact, want to talk to him at all had made him lose a bit more of that spark. The boy had kept his word, however, and the way the two of them would dance around each other in the corridors was funny enough to warrant him borrowing the surveillance tapes and a bucket of popcorn whenever he just wanted to enjoy himself.

The betting pool was _enormous_. To his knowledge, the two had yet to utter a single word to one another. Given the way they avoided one another, Hades had his doubts they even knew what the other looked like. Though if the initial explosion was even half as impressive as the first time Natsu had switched to Dragon form after hitting his first growth spurt or those ten minutes when everyone was freaking the fuck out about Lucy somehow accidentally summoning the Spirit King, he would be busting the piggy banks open and splurging on some repairs for the airship.

If it somehow found a way to match a full power Sema…

Hades shivered at the sheer blasphemy that dripped from that statement like a viscous acid.

 _Nothing_ could match a full powered Sema. The full powered Sema that was under his control and _oh today was just such a good day_.

The communications Lacrima was on its fourth ring, the ring that managed to snap Hades out of his thoughts as he tapped the screen and held it up to his ear. His voice, chipper with the day's good cheer, rang out across the throne room, bouncing back to his ears and raising his mood even higher with the elation found therein.

Gray had probably just forgotten to bring along a shopping list. He could be quite scatterbrained when he put his mind to it.

"Y'ello?"

"ZOMBIES!"

And just like that, his good mood vanished. The word had been loud enough to echo throughout the room, each repeat sinking the canoe that was his positive emotions just a little further into the murky depths.

With timing born of countless amounts of practice, Hades slowly glanced over to the only window that was visible through the doorway, just in time for the first explosion to go off.

"…You've been gone for _three minutes_."

A very specific pattern lit up the sky. Stars rained down on a town that was just out of view.

Someone shrieked.

It was Jellal.

 **XxX**

Very interesting things were happening to Gray's abs as he lay against a particularly uncomfortable stone, his breath refusing to stay in his lungs. Conditioned similar to his seemed to be all the rage lately, as only Erza was still on her feet, shaking worse than someone who had recently had all the blood in their body replaced with caffeine as she held two daggers out in front of her, arranged into a cross.

"Okay…oka- haaaaaa…" He may have been dying. He could see the light- no, wait, that was just the residue of Jellal's magic. With that in mind, Gray pushed himself up until he was sitting, ignoring the muscles that had just straight up quite on him as he looked around at the destruction they had wrought. Not a single person had been alive when they'd first started out, Natsu and Zeroth had confirmed it, and by the time the lightshow had died down a full hour later, there wasn't all that much city left either. "Is everyone-"

Somebody shrieked.

It was not a funny joke any more.

Gray actually heard his retinas sizzle as Jellal fired a beam of light into a small pile of rubble, reducing it from dust to a sub-atomic stain. With ringing eyes, he turned a questioning look on the space of air next to where the Heavenly Body Mage was lying, the way Zeroth converged on his eyeballs in order to repair the damage making him look absolutely terrifying.

"I saw a spider," Jellal gasped with what must have been the last of the air left in his lungs, utterly unconcerned with the literally empty gaze that was being directed in his general direction.

"…Good call." With that, Gray flopped back onto the ground, sighing in annoyance as a rock dug itself a nice groove into the back of his skull. He was already in the process of reattaching a leg that had been bitten off, and now he had a concussion on top of that. Great.

Deliora snorted in his sleep, from where he had collapsed after getting unnecessary permission. The poor thing had taken on a majority of the creatures, and there had been very little he could do in regards to making them stay down. His beams worked well in that regard, even if they were difficult to pull off in his current circumstance. Still, he'd tried.

The place was fairly lonely now that all the ghosts had vanished. Gray didn't mind that one bit.

"Incoming." Natsu muttered, his nose back in his scroll and his arms held in a position that couldn't have possibly been comfortable. Not that he gave any indication of caring in the slightest. "Huge amount of magic, cheap perfume, and a lot of alcohol."

"Sounds like my kind of woman." Happy announced from the decomposing corpse he had been sitting atop and poking with his fork.

Flinging a rock into the back of the cat's head and expertly pretending that he hadn't even though he was literally the only person that could have flung the rock without the help of magic that none of them were capable of performing, Gray pushed himself off the ground once more, shaking a snoring Lucy awake and pretending he didn't notice the puddle of drool she had been sleeping in as he painfully dragged himself to his feet and turned to face the path Natsu was still pointing towards with the enormous wing that had grown out of his back.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

"She'll be here soon." Satisfied with the answer despite the fact that it had been somewhat muffled by the scroll being held in front of Natsu's face, Gray stretched his recently reattached leg out in order to work out the kinks, absently undoing the half of his shirt's buttons that had up until that point managed to stay closed. It was remarkable mobile, likely a result of the ten minutes they had all been waiting for this mysterious 'she' to arrive.

Lucy had fallen back asleep. Erza had curled herself so close into Jellal's side that she may as well have been growing out of him, having somehow found enough leverage to burrow underneath his shirt as they both napped. Natsu seemed content to sit and read, his wings out and ready to shield the group at a moment's notice. Happy was still sitting on a dead body, but Gray didn't care about Happy so he said nothing.

Not seeing a chance that they were going to be moving any time soon, Gray settled against a rock, wondering why they were bothering to stick around in the first place.

Plot related reasons, Gray. Plot related reasons.

Yes, such a thing exists.

* * *

"Wow. Someone really fucked this place up."

Gray's eyes cracked open as the voice washed over him, the conversation he had been having with Zeroth about the actual ramification of an uprising of the walking dead being put on hold as he glanced up at the person that had the audacity to lean their elbow on the tree he had been sitting against.

It was a girl around his age, dressed about as well as him, with brown hair that curled down her back and a Guild mark just above her hip. A Fairy Tail Guild mark, to be exact.

If Gray had been wearing one, he would have offered her his jacket. Her attire did _not_ look warm.

Glancing back up at her face, Gray took note of the raised eyebrows and the flat look, both of which were being directed solely at him. He could hear everyone but Natsu snoring and the occasional rustle of parchment, which meant that he was going to have to be the one to continue this… conversation? Interrogation? Whatever.

It was in that moment, when Gray opened his mouth to respond, that he saw it. Out the corner of his vision, he saw the green hand as it emerged from the dirt, the fingers that wrapped around the girl's ankle, and he was already on the move before she had even had the chance to process what she was seeing.

It was conditioning born of an hour long struggle against what would always get back up, where destruction had to be up close and personal lest he risk one of his friends' lives. It was a rightful fear that every teenager had, one of zombies rising and eating a pretty girl right in front of them. With nary a how-do-you-do, Gray was on his feet and had an arm wrapped around the girl's waist, dragging her out of the things clutches and against his chest. She'd managed to look down in the moment before he prepared his spell, her eyes widening as the rightful fear every pretty girl had of being eaten by the zombie that had just risen in front of her doubtlessly swept through her.

He didn't bother regulating any of the ethernano he pumped into his Ice Devil's Rage, the more magic, the more likely he was to kill it. Zeroth participated in full, less of a desire to cleanse the world of such evil and more due to the latent desire to ironically watch the whole cosmos burn. He was a fun guy at parties.

"Ice Devil's Rage!"

The zombie did not survive. Neither did the path leading into the town. Or the forest beyond that path. Or the small mountain beyond that forest.

Lava spilled down the side of a volcano that had been blasted in half, just on the edge of their vision.

From where he had leaned out of a window, Hades screamed down at Gray. Nobody heard it except Natsu, who proceeded to ignore it.

With her hair blown back and he eyelids frozen as wide open as they could go, the girl's head slowly rotated from the devastation before her to the one responsible for it. Gray had let his arms drop in favour of actually directing the attack in front of them rather than all around, so he knew for a fact that her arms weren't frozen around his sides like her current grip was implying.

"So… hi. I'm Gray."

Natsu was definitely ignoring the silent pleas for help Gray was attempting to send through sign language behind his back.

What a bastard.

 **XxX**

Still makes more sense than the latest arc in the manga.

Also, this is the last time I take inspiration from the filler anime episodes. Mainly because I went for what I considered the most ridiculous, and now I need to find ways to top myself.

Expect more people from Legal Guilds to show up in the next few chapters. Still need both time to think of plot and plot to think of time. Plus, minor world building and character progression type stuff. And the lols, can't forget those.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** Spoilers for the current arc going on, but I feel as though I should maybe question this... how is DiMaria still alive? Natsu shocked Happy earlier this same arc by holding back on his attacks. Happy, the guy's best friend... and after the awakening that trumps DiMaria's God powers, he can punt her into a wall and she's not only still alive, but conscious?

I find that very difficult to believe, is all I'm saying.

* * *

Warnings: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Trace amounts of Angst, Likely juvenile levels of humour, No Bashing, Ghosts, Zombies, Nonsense. Keep out of reach of children.

Pairings: [Currently] N/A

Story Recommendation: Yeah, I got nothing this time. Whoops.

* * *

Natsu is a quiet boy turned dragon turned boy, who doesn't quite understand life outside his numerous scrolls. Erza's smile is bright enough to blind all to her unhealthy obsession of all things that go stab. Gray is relatively normal, when he isn't talking to ghosts or arguing with his strange tattoo. Jellal is… Jellal. Lucy is an heiress to an arguably criminal empire who accidentally stumbled into this mess and is content to stay; at least, when she isn't putting out spot-fires or trying to convince Happy that he is not, in fact, the next incarnation of the Devil.

* * *

"She was _not_ hitting on me."

Jellal nudged another slab of stone upwards with his foot, letting it drop back down to land on the arm that was waving from underneath with a disturbing crunch. In the few hours since Hades had barred them access to the airship until they had 'thought about what they'd done', coming across the occasional mobile, severed body part had eventually lost its edge. Now, it was just somewhat boring.

"She gave you her Lacrima number." Gray rolled his eyes as his own communication Lacrima was shoved into his face, not bothering to question how Jellal had managed to retrieve it from his pocket without him even realising it. A tree came crashing down atop the shield of ice he'd erected above their heads; Gray would go on to suspect that those marks at the base of the log _looked_ like they'd been made with a fork, even if there was a suspicious lack of evidence proving his claim. "She spent twenty-seven percent of her total time here groping your biceps."

Gray glanced off to the side, perhaps searching for assistance that he knew damn well wouldn't be coming from the large Dragon that had taken a block of destroyed houses to itself in order to relax and read its scroll. "Maybe she does that to all the guys she talks to, you don't know that."

The stare that Gray refused to acknowledge being on the receiving end of was decidedly unimpressed. "She tried to kiss you."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." In a spectacular display of his lacking social skills, Gray swiped a skull that was still halfway covered in decomposing flesh from beside his feet, holding it out to Jellal even as his tattoo rushed down his arm and coated the exposed bone like a swarm of insects. "What do you reckon caused this?"

Jellal recoiled away from the generous gift with a visible shudder, flailing a hand when Gray made to advance on his position. A maggot leisurely made its way through the eye socket that was empty, and the hand that Jellal had been waving was covering his mouth a moment later, not quite succeeding in muffling his gags.

"If Zeroth can't tell you, then what chance do I have? And don't change the subject!" With a downright disrespectful application of Heavenly Body Magic, the skull and unfortunate maggot found themselves being vaporised, along with the finger that Gray had been poking at them with. Nobody present reacted to the gruesome injury apart from Zeroth, who descended on it with a general air of exasperation. "Do you know how long I've been waiting for something like this?"

"Six years of knowing each other, half a year to get comfortable enough, we were both twelve so allowing two years to ensure puberty…" Natsu turned his scroll over, utterly uninterested in the conversation he had just so rudely imposed himself upon. Deliora snorted from beside him and turned over in his sleep – yet another of Gray's potential allies abandoning him. "Be nice to the man, Gray. This is a conversation three and a half years in the making."

"Three years and eight months, actually," Jellal shot Natsu an amicable smile, "I'm a very trusting person. Now, anyway, this is the first chance I've gotte-"

By the time Jellal had managed to turn back to the topic of discussion, Gray was long gone, an unconvincing chunk of ice that was vaguely shaped like him in his place.

 **XxX**

"So how are things looking over here?"

Erza didn't look up from where she was poking the ground with what looked like a femur. Gray didn't question why an arm burst through the soil after the pattern of taps was complete, nor the logistics between its appearance and its falling to the dirt in multiple pieces.

Gray watched, his hands in the pockets of the jeans he somehow managed to consistently keep on his body, as Erza shuffled three steps forth and began poking on the ground once more. Shooting a glance over his shoulder in response to the frustrated sigh that the wind carried to his ears, he turned back to watch as another pile of bones was shredded into too many pieces to possibly count, stepping over a toe that was still twitching and following after Erza as she continued down the street.

Erza hummed appreciatively as she picked up a particularly jagged humerus, Requipping it in order to do who knows what later. Tilting her head to the side, she turned to regard Gray for the first time since he had approached her, her hair being kept out of her eye with what appeared to be a series of interlinked fingers. "You reckon Master Hades is still mad at us?"

Gray opened his mouth to respond, only to let out a short yelp as something lashed against the back of his head. Extremely oversized serrated chunk of ice in hand, Gray whirled around, his murderous indignation lowering from a bubbling simmer to a lukewarm, somewhat coddled annoyance upon noticing the series of chains lighting up the sky with a single, definitive word.

 ** _YES._**

Full stop included.

Gray slowly shook his head as the chains withdrew themselves, the ice in his hand melting to form a puddle at his feet. "…The man is legitimately terrifying, and his idea of timeout is segregation in a ghost town."

Erza didn't respond, already being half a block down the street by the time Gray stopped talking. Gray was only made aware of this fact when he turned about to continue their conversation, only to trip over what amounted to a quarter of an ankle.

"So, that girl earlier…" Erza probably didn't even notice that Gray wasn't directly behind her as she broached the topic. Or she did, as was fine with yelling whatever she had to say for the world to hear. "You gonna tap that?"

A thin spire of ice pushed Gray back to his feet. At no point in the journey was he the least bit amused.

 **XxX**

Natsu twisted his scroll until it was parallel with the first raindrop that had fallen the previous night.

Gray had left a couple of minutes ago, after spending a good portion of time hiding underneath one of his spread wings.

Jellal had gotten suspicious eventually, which had led into a conversation about the merits of using Transitional Magicks during the directional periods of a Maker Spell to provide enough cover for Gray to escape.

Natsu was a good, if somewhat reticent and apathetic friend.

 **XxX**

Deliora snored on, no longer caring about the day's events.

 **XxX**

"Why aren't you with the female?"

Gray resolutely refused to look anywhere but forwards, at the tip of the stick he was wielding as he poked at a snapping jaw. He had been crouched down in front of this unfortunate member of the living dead for the better part of fifteen minutes, amusing himself the only way he knew how; at the expense of someone or something else.

A mostly insignificant weight landing atop his shoulder threw his balance slightly forward, sending his stick forth far enough to jab at the back of the body's throat. Its mouth slammed shut, and Gray tugged half-heartedly for a few moments, before sighing and resigning himself to his fate.

"Many reasons, Happy."

The weight leaving his shoulder coincided perfectly with the feathery appendage slamming into the side of his face. It was only out of respect for Natsu's wishes that Gray didn't relinquish the fork currently jabbing into his forehead in order to repurpose it through Happy's tongue.

"I was under the impression that fornication was all human males thought about?"

Gray stared up at the flying blue cat in front of him; the flying blue cat who, if he were human, still wouldn't have been old enough to attend school. "We are not having this conversation."

Turning on his heel, Gray instinctively ducked as Happy darted in front of him via the space his head had been occupying the previous second. And if Happy had poised his fork to take a little off the top of his skull… well, nobody had been looking anyway.

"I refuse your refusal!" Happy stabbed a finger down towards Gray in such a way that would have been threatening, if he were more than a tenth of Gray's size. While being kept aloft by fluffy, angelic wings. "The overlord of all evil will accept nothing but your utmost servitude!"

"Happy, please go away."

"Silence, mount! There is no basis to your refusal! My nose, granted to me by my demonic heritage-!"

"Feline heritage."

"- _Demonic_ heritage could smell her attraction!" Gray groaned, one hand coming up to cover his face, the other rising to catch Happy before he could be skewered while his guard was down. Happy thrashed in his grip, an adorably frustrated expression being touted by his face as he mercilessly stabbed at any body part within his reach. "My hearing, granted to me by the abominations spawned from Hell that were my ancestors-!"

"Your feline ancestor- you know what, I don't even care." Ignoring Happy's roars of indignation, Gray held his head high, tossing the cat over one shoulder and burying his hands into his pockets.

A somewhat serene smile spread across his face at the hollow _thunk_ that followed.

"I kept on saying that Zancrow was right, and we should have made an omelette," Gray muttered to himself as he made his way further into town, deciding against questioning why the ground was shaking and why his back felt quite so warm, "I was always doing it just to annoy Natsu… but the _alternative_ …"

 _"F҉oo̴l͝ish m͏o͜r͞t́al͢! Y͜ơ̕u͝ ̴̀d̶̢aré́̀ ̛̀t̸́u͞r̀͞n̶ yo͘͜ur̨̢ ́b̢̢a͘̕ck ̨́͞o̵̵n͡ ̧͢p̶u͏r̀è͡ ̨͘͟e͏͝͝v͟ì̴̢l̵̀͡!"҉?̷͞҉_

Gray slowly shook his head as he turned the corner.

He didn't look back.

 ** _"Y̢̛͜͟͟Ó̧̧̕U̧͢͞͡ ̵̢͟Á͠R̷̡̢E͘͢͟͠ ̵͠C̷͟͝O̸͏̶͢Ḿ̴̸͘Ḿ͡A͢͠N͘͞͏D̶̵̨͠Ę̶́҉҉D̸̛͘͝ ̛͠͏́Ţ́͟O̷̡͘ ͏҉S̴͡҉͘I҉͡͡Ǹ͜!̸͢͟͠"_**

Such were the cries coming from a blue cat with its head stuck in a wall.

Ignore the great mass of hellfire and brimstone. That's what kept Gray sane.

…Relatively.

 **XxX**

"What do you mean, it's too much of a cold case? Magic is immaterial, it doesn't _get_ cold!"

"…"

"Yes, I understand that the specimens aren't the greatest you _could_ have had access to, but what do you want me to do? Kill them _less_? Sorry, but if a zombie is shambling towards me, the option for _less_ is already out! And don't think I've forgotten that _you_ helped with that!"

"…"

"Look, you're a derivative of a Curse, aren't y-"

"…!"

"Ow, damn it, fine! You're superior to all Curses out there, so why are you having so much trouble with this one? People are climbing out of their graves; am I supposed to believe that the trail is _difficult_ to pick up?"

"▅▅▅!"

"Well, I'm sorry for doubting that you're doing your best! I just figured with the amount you boast about yourself, your best would be good enough to be even the _least_ bit useful! Clearly, I was incorrect, my apologies!"

"…~"

With an eyelid twitching hard enough to cross the threshold into unhealthy, Gray banished the tattoo from his skin with a click of his fingers, tossing the skull he had been holding to the side and giving approximately zero shits when it impacted the stone path and shattered. Wiping his hands free of any potential rot, Gray made his way over to what appeared to be the remains of a wine cellar, descending the slope and settling against one of the only barrels that was still in one piece.

He then punched through the wood with a hollow tube of ice, constructing a few obligatory loops before sticking the other end into his mouth and getting comfortable on the ground. Had he been aware of how accurately he was emulating a certain mage whom had just passed through town not too long ago, he probably would have made two straws so he could drink twice as fast.

As it stood, he was merely left to his own devices, with nothing but the occasional groan of the undead and crashing of far-off destruction to keep him entertained as he stared into the clouds.

It was five minutes after he had drained the barrel of half its bounty that Gray heard footsteps encroaching on his position. With a moan that probably sounded pitiful to any outside observer, Gray grabbed the first thing his hands landed on, dragging over to where he was sitting and hoping it would be big enough to cover his entire body.

Turns out it was an empty tanker. And the answer was no, it was not big enough to cover his entire body. So when Lucy stumbled down the crater he had hidden himself in and discovered him, it was while he was sitting cross-legged on the ground, with a crazy straw filled with alcohol in his mouth and an empty tanker covering his hair and halfway down his forehead.

The two stared at one another for a moment, before Lucy shook her head and started forth. Gray's eyes fell to the book - likely pilfered from one of the empty houses surrounding them - in her grasp as she relieved him of his straw and moved the source of alcohol out of arms reach (as she had done before more times than Gray would have liked to admit).

He didn't protest as she dragged him upright and into a position that was better for his posture, nor did he protest when she took a seat on one of the more comfortable looking rocks and failed to crack her book open. "Are you alright?"

"I hate the universe and everything that resides in it."

Lucy rolled her eyes. She would later claim that she hadn't and Gray was imagining things, but he knew what he saw.

"The others are just a bit… excited." Gray raised an eyebrow, the distance between his eyelids closing beyond 'tired' to settle on 'unimpressed'. Lucy responded by opening her book and making herself comfortable. "Cana was a very nice girl; she could make you happy if you gave her a chance."

Gray threw a longing glance over to the corner that held the remaining barrels, a long sigh leaving his mouth as he reached forth, tipping Lucy's book away from her face in order to look her in the eye.

"Lucy, no offence, but I really do not want to talk about this right now." Perhaps leaving outright would have been a better option, but the coverage provided by their bouts of senseless violence and destruction was too good to give up. Gray had seen the romance novels that Jellal liked to read in his spare time; not even the Heavenly Body Mage's patience was infinite, and not even the hardiness Zeroth provided him with was enough to withstand the trauma of a true romantic at heart for a second time. "I already feel bad enough about refusing Jellal's stupid face for half an hour, please just drop it."

Lucy blinked down at him, her expression blank. Carefully blank, too blank; Gray almost burst into tears on the spot as the realisation of what was happening set in.

"If you insist."

Three little words, and he was doomed. To make matters even worse, he could do nothing but watch as the trap snapped shut around his ankles.

He could be stubborn. Retaining sanity when everybody you spoke to on a regular basis for years on end was transparent in the literal sense took more than just strength of will. Ignoring the voice in his arm that would tell him to burn things was a bit more difficult, because burning things _was_ fun, but Ur had said that it was wrong and if there was one voice in his head he would listen to above all others, it was Ur.

Jellal, on the other hand, had survived over a decade while being practically surgically attached to Erza at the hip. And if there was one person he never wanted any information to reach, it was Jellal. The man was trustworthy, but to say he was governed by emotion was to say that Master Hades could have probably benefited from medication of some sort.'Nuff said.

So come Hell or high water, Gray was not leaving his little safety hole. Which left him no other choice than to sit and be subjected to the third lesson any ranking member of any mafia family was set to learn; pinning your target down and letting them know through subtle gestures how disappointed you were in them until they finally caved and abided by the rules you set them.

Yes, Gray had enrolled in Mafia School for a semester. It had started and ended on order from Hades, and was only known in the official Grimoire Heart archives as 'Kneecapalypse.'

But that was beside the point. What wasn't beside the point (some may argue that it was the point altogether) was the fact that Lucy, despite all appearances, was the heiress to a mob throne. She, with her adorable expressions and naturally large eyes, had been born to break others apart in a desperate bid to gain her approval.

Gray managed ten minutes of silence. It was good, but in the end, it didn't matter in the slightest. He had been destined to lose that encounter.

Breaking his longing gaze towards the corner, Gray turned back to his company, his mood only souring further upon noticing the small, victorious smirk she was sporting. "You make it very easy to hate you sometimes."

Lucy didn't miss a beat, nor did she look up from her book. She needn't have worried regardless, both of them knew the outcome of this encounter. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

His counter ready, Gray paused as the first shades of suspicion made themselves clear to him. Turning to his built in magical sensing buddy, Gray silently posed his question, the distance between his eyelids shrinking past 'unimpressed' to land on 'I can barely see anymore but you know what I'm thinking as soon as I look at you'.

If he wasn't so annoyed at the day's events that the erstwhile emotion was so palpable it was ready to leave his body and become one with the infinite expanses of the universe, Gray just may have admitted that he was impressed. Given that he would rather eat the arm housing Zeroth in that moment than praise his current captor in any capacity, he instead settled for finally allowing his eyes to close, falling backwards and not caring in the slightest that his head had just come into contact with his abandoned, and more importantly very hard, straw.

"…I don't want to drag any of you down with me."

Had Jellal heard that sentence being uttered, he would have gasped in a way that would have come across as being facetious, had it originated from any other source. Then would follow the inspirational speech that would last beyond the entropy of the universe and sap Gray's motivation to live rather than renew it.

Maybe Lucy was looking at him, maybe she wasn't. Gray couldn't find it within himself to care; he would say his part, and then hopefully never have to think about it again. "I'm pretty far from normal, Lucy. I don't think about it all that much, but normal people don't see ghosts. Normal people don't join up with Dark Guilds on a whim. Cana's a member of Fairy Tail. She's on the right side of the law… mostly. She and I belong to two difference worlds. And that's with you all assuming I feel anything for her, which I can tell you now isn't correct."

His thoughts on Cana were much like his thoughts on… sparkling water. She/it existed, good for her/it. That didn't mean she/it was required in his life, no matter how much his friends liked to drink.

From somewhere above him, Lucy hummed, doing a good job at pretending she wasn't overtly interested in their conversation. Gray didn't bother opening his eyes to check, because he wasn't interested in the pitiful looks the ghost that looked a lot like Lucy would send him whenever her daughter found him in the liquor cabinets again.

"Well, you gave her your number, didn't you? So there's still hope for you!"

Gray's mouth cracked into a grin. It was all teeth.

"Now you're just baiting me to be difficult. I know how your mind works, which is why I'm going to change the subject and stop replying if you're not compliant." Opening one eye into a slit, Gray tilted his head to the side, bringing one arm up to be used as a cushion against the ground and slinging the other over his stomach. Lucy was alternating between looking and him and the book in her grasp, the bottom of her face hidden behind the cover. "Have you decided if you want to come with us tomorrow or not?"

It took a moment for Lucy to lower the book, and when she did, it was to reveal a thoughtful frown.

"I was done on the topic regardless, but I don't think I will." Lucy's eyes climbed up the adjacent slope, before making the trip back to Gray's face. "Finding Igneel isn't my life's ambition, not like you two. I'm more liable to get in the way than anything else."

Gray snorted, his grin shrinking into something a bit more genuine as kicked one leg up over the other and turned his gaze off into the clouds.

"Pardon me, I will let you know that I have four ambitions in life." Raising the arm that had been lounging on his midsection, Gray began his list, ticking every item off with a finger as he went. "Finding Ur, helping Natsu find Igneel, and killing Zeref because someone has to; Hades is getting ridiculous."

"What's ambition number four?"

Gray shot a glance at Lucy through the corner of his eye. Her book was open once more; the title written in a language he didn't understand.

"Number four is the most difficult of them all." With all the dramatic flair such an announcement deserved, Gray raised a final finger, shooting a small chunk of ice from the tip that exploded once he had moved his digit all the way. "Getting Ultear to talk to me. Though I'm pretty sure I got close the other week. Is her hair… I only saw it for a second before she was gone, uh… a kinda dark purple? Because if not then I lied, I'm no closer than when I started."

Lucy definitely rolled her eyes this time. Not that she would have denied it if asked.

"You're not lying."

"Hah! There's hope for me yet!"

Gray pumped his fist into the air, before the momentary enthusiasm deflated and sent it crumbling back down to his side. Silence filled the crater, the only noises to break it being the rustle of pages being turned and the occasional audible breath.

Lucy was done, it seemed, which left Gray with nothing to do but look towards the sky. Nothing offered itself to curb his boredom, and after a few minutes it didn't seem as though anything would turn up anytime soon.

Gray shifted on the ground, rubbing the itch that had developed on his back against a stone.

…I'm so bored. Are we allowed back on the ship ye-"

A bolt of lightning lit up the sky… no, wait, that was just a series of chains emanating the furious glow of an eroding star.

 ** _NO!_**

…Exclamation mark included.

 **XxX**

I've figured out some of the plot of this story.

Somehow, it evolved from zombies.

Much like this fanfiction in general, come to think of it.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** *Death rattle*

* * *

Warnings: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Trace amounts of Angst, Likely juvenile levels of humour, No Bashing, Ghosts, Zombies, Nonsense. Keep out of reach of children.

Pairings: [Currently] N/A

Story Recommendation: Still nothing. But this isn't what you're here for, so who cares?

* * *

Natsu is a quiet boy turned dragon turned boy, who doesn't quite understand life outside his numerous scrolls. Erza's smile is bright enough to blind all to her unhealthy obsession of all things that go stab. Gray is relatively normal, when he isn't talking to ghosts or arguing with his strange tattoo. Jellal is… Jellal. Lucy is an heiress to an arguably criminal empire who accidentally stumbled into this mess and is content to stay; at least, when she isn't putting out spot-fires or trying to convince Happy that he is not, in fact, the next incarnation of the Devil.

* * *

Finally, she was ready.

Ultear marched down the corridors of Grimoire Heart's airbase with purpose. Her back was straight, posture perfect as she passed door after door in her quest. Her hair had been tied back and her crystal ball left in her room, an attempt to pre-emptively quash anything that may have diverted her attention away from her current purpose.

It had taken her years. Years of hiding, years of debating with herself and inadvertently turning Meredy against her fellow Guild members with her actions. Years of listening to the rumours that surrounded him and his group of friends and years of trying to catch a simple glimpse without letting him know she was around. Years of ignoring jibes from people she did not know or care for, years of enduring the looks she would receive from Master Hades that were equal parts pity and exasperation.

It had taken her years to reach this conclusion, but finally, _finally_ , she was ready to talk to Gray Fullbuster.

Except she wasn't ready in the slightest. Which explained why the door she had just passed looked so familiar; she'd completed this circuit of hallways five times now.

In theory it was simple enough. Gray and his friends would always seclude themselves to one of the lesser used kitchens whenever it came time for a meal; a room that was poorly designed and generally silly to even look at, that still managed to function above and beyond expectations in spite of everything going against it.

Ultear had been in there once in her lifetime. She wasn't very thrilled with the prospect of returning.

But this would be for the best. It was time that she came to grips with her own decisions. It was time to take some of the blame that had unfairly been shifted to her mother. It was time to hear Gray's side of the story and decide for herself if she'd made the wrong choice, all those years ago out in the cold.

Her assumptions against his words. Her hatred against his evidence. Her resolve against his.

All it would take was a knock. The door was coming up on her left, the starting line for her seventh lap around the airbase. Ultear eyed it up as she got closer, her gaze involuntarily shifting to every possible escape option before she forcefully shook her head and returned her attention to her destination.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Ultear marched up to the door, straightening her back even further and ignoring the ominous cracks that shuddered along her spine at the action. She was the leader of the Kins of Purgatory. She was the most accomplished Time Mage in Fiore. She had been an elite officer of the Grimoire Heart Guild for more than half her life. There was absolutely nothing to be afraid of, which was good, because she most certainly was _not_ afraid.

She was merely… apprehensive about wasting her time. Yes, that was it. Her only concern was the proper delegation of her only limited resource. There was no fear present whatsoever. She could do this.

No. She _would_ do this.

There was no turning back now.

Ultear nodded resolutely to the wall, as it was the only witness she had. Raising her hand to knock, Ultear came within a single stride of the door… before attempting to turn on her heel.

She was wrong. She couldn't do this.

Unfortunately, her forward momentum refused to shift with such short notice, and the end result was Ultear tripping over her own feet, smacking into the door head-first with enough force to knock it off its hinges. With the groan of a tumbling behemoth, the door began to fall inwards. With her face connected to the metal through the sheer adhesive effect of morbid embarrassment, Ultear followed it closely.

The kitchen was a lively room. Even when Gray and his friends were not present, a varying cacophony of noises could be heard behind the closed off door, though they would always stop immediately upon someone attempting to gain access. Nothing anybody tried could explain the phenomenon; not the security magic employed, nor the speed of which the door was breached. Every single time, the sounds would freeze and the equipment would return to looking like it had never been touched, despite the wonderful aroma that cloaked every surface. The utensils would ever have a thick coat of dust, no matter how many of them had been in use before the door moved.

Nobody could explain it. Which had eventually lead to everybody throwing their hands up, and just accepting Gray's explanation of 'ghosts'.

This time, the noises didn't stop as soon as someone entered the room. Ultear glanced up, met the amused gaze of Erza, and pushed herself to her feet with as much dignity as she could muster. Erza grabbed her arm when she stumbled, her head still ringing from the impact, and lead her to one of the free chairs that sat before the large counter. Jellal greeted her with a smile and a nod as she took the seat next to him, only one away from the end, returning to the plate in front of him that was piled with far too much food for someone so skinny.

Ultear raised an eyebrow as Erza climbed onto his lap, looping her arms around his neck and opening her mouth. Jellal obediently held his fork up, and Ultear decided that literally anything else in the room was far more deserving of her attention.

The first thing she saw were the various pots and pans that were swirling around a sink that had been filled with water, and the disembodied cleaning equipment that scrubbed every centimetre of surface they could reach. There were spells geared towards such occurrences, even if they were more obscure in nature, and Ultear had been about to move on until one sponge froze, rose above the din, and began attacking the dishrag beside it with otherworldly vigour.

Chore Magic wasn't known for attacking itself. Ultear shrugged to herself, entirely ready to write it off as another oddity of the people around her display, before a bottle of soap came over and settled the impromptu brawl before it could get any further out of hand. That was the moment it clicked.

Ultear hadn't ever actually seen any evidence of the ghosts that Gray claimed he could speak to. She wasn't the only one who was skeptical; there were many others on board who linked the strange occurrences and disjointed noises that followed him around to either the teenager's own insanity, or a lack of understanding of his own magic. She did disagree with the first option; while the group wasn't a textbook example of sanity, there wasn't exactly an argument to be had in that regard.

They were in one of the Darkest Guilds in the country, one that didn't acquire numbers through conscription. Nobody had a leg to stand on when the topic of sanity and its application by said applicants came up. The argument gave no explanation for the random pockets of Gray's magic she could feel floating around (much like the area surrounding the sink, come to think of it), nor the cloud that was constantly draped around his form like a protective pet.

She may not have been the most accomplished when it came to detecting magic in the atmosphere, but Gray's stood out.

It felt a disturbingly disproportionate amount like her own.

Besides, she'd checked in with the Guild's and ship's sensors before making her way to the kitchen for the third time. Natsu's magical signature, easily the largest in the Guild and battling for that position in regards to the entire continent, was entirely absent. Oddly enough, Gray's had been as well, which generally meant that he had stopped the flow of ethernano in his body in order to go to sleep. The idea of Gray being able to sustain a spell that required such a high amount of direction while unconscious scared her, if only on the level that housed her more basic instincts.

Considering how little he ever slept, he likely wouldn't have had the time to practice anyway.

Still, if he were asleep, that didn't mean she was going to wake him. The longer he stayed asleep, the longer she could put off what would likely be a conversation that would alter the way she thought about _everything_ , hence why she had eventually decided to meet him in the kitchen.

Ghosts were just so much easier to come to grips with. If Hades could acknowledge it as fact, anyone could.

Bored with watching the disembodied cleaning instruments floating about their duties and not at all ready to interrupt whatever the two teenagers beside her were doing, Ultear continued her perusal of the kitchen. There were cupboards that would have been out of reach to anyone in the Guild up high, bricks poked out at random intervals, and she could have sworn she'd seen a cockroach dip its front legs into the filled sink, rub them together, dry them on an offered dishrag, and then begin crawling up the wall with a plate balanced on its head at an angle that really should have lost the fight to gravity by now.

Run with it, she told herself. Once she was done, she'd never have to come back here again.

Her eyes landed on the blue cat that Natsu always carried around with him… what was his name? Ultear draped one arm over the counter and leaned her chin against it, absently wondering where the other three members of this unofficial little team were hiding as she watched the cat strike at the coffeemaker violently with his claws.

If memory served, everybody on the ship disliked dealing with this one even more-so than the others. He was quite an adorable creature, she couldn't even begin to imagine why-

 _"I've met with pedophile violin players whom are currently burning in the underworld, and even_ they _were less fiddly than this machine!"_

"So where's that Gray guy?" Ultear swung around in her seat so quickly that she almost sent herself sprawling, her back suddenly ramrod straight. Erza glanced up from where she had been poking Jellal in the forehead with a fork, and Jellal used the distraction to take back his pilfered utensil and return to his meal.

"That Gray guy?" Not to be deterred, Erza grabbed a strip of bacon from the place, getting two good pokes in on Jellal's cheek before he snatched it out of her hands with his teeth and swallowed it whole. Shrugging with the defeat, she turned back to Ultear, either not seeing or not caring about her discomfort. "You just missed him."

Ultear's eyebrows furrowed, both in thought and to correspond with the shake of her head when a slice of toast was offered to her. All equipment and authority had deemed his magic inactive not half an hour prior, and it was far too late into the day for him to still be sleeping. Perhaps he'd gone back for a nap? "How long ago did he leave?"

Jellal's eyes were filled with something approaching laughter as they met hers. She knew exactly why, what with him having been the only one of their quintet to regularly engage her in conversation, and the only thing that stopped the approaching comment about the girl who had taken up residence in his lap was the answer to her question.

"Gray's been gone for five months."

Ultear froze, her posture impeccable in spite of the light that was rapidly retreating from her eyes. Her lips, still slightly upturned from her previous attempt at speaking, twitched at the flash of light that erupted out into the kitchen. In unison, three heads whipped around, three pairs of eyes staring at the photo that Happy was holding in one paw and the polaroid camera he was holding in the other.

"Thirty-five million, five hundred and sixty-seven thousand Jewels on the Time Woman first properly seeing Gray in this room after a major revelation." As Happy spoke, a bag appeared in the air beside his head and slammed to the ground. Judging from the noise it made, it was filled with the money he'd just happened to win. As one person gaped at the amount of money and the other two accepted their share of the collective bet, the camera in Happy's paw whirred, spitting out what was likely the photo it had taken a moment before. "Now we just need to fake Natsu's death and get Gray in a dress, and we can triple it."

The enormous bag vanished as soon as Erza withdrew her hand from it. Accepting the picture that had just been taken, Jellal grabbed one corner with a thumb and ring finger, pulling away and taking with them a perfect copy of the picture in question. The copy, Ultear faintly noted as it was placed in Jellal's wallet and she took the photo of Gray from Happy's outstretched paw, only included the two sitting beside her. She was nowhere to be seen.

She would have made a comment at any other point in time. Instead, she was left to reflect on how she could have possibly missed her chance so completely as she took a proper look at the photo that was now in her possession.

Wait, did Gray really make a habit out of not wearing adequate clothing no matter the circumstance? Was that rumour actually true?

Because if so…

…She had no complaints.

 **XxX**

Still no luck.

Natsu smiled as he bade the hawks circling around his head goodbye, a gesture that would have come across as far more intimidating on the visage of a mighty Dragon, had he not been entertaining a conversation with them for the last half an hour. They all called back their farewells, in a mix of voices and accents that anybody else never could have understood, as he spotted a satisfactory clearing and dove towards the forest below.

Gray - having decided that between Natsu and the intangible force that Natsu could only barely feel gripping onto his back which he knew to be Deliora, it would be safe to do so - fidgeted minutely in his sleep at the abrupt change of gravity. He didn't awake, and given that he'd only fallen asleep a few days ago, he wasn't slated to for another week.

Natsu alighted the ground as gently as he could, which still resulted in a tremor that was felt for a few hectares in any given direction. Trees were flattened beneath his feet unintentionally, and Natsu winced as their bark dug into the soles of his feet. Even so, he did not transform back, merely curling on the flattened grass within the parameter of shrubbery and closing his eyes.

He'd been flying for the last day and a half, gathering any information he possibly could in regards to other building-sized objects in the sky. There was precious little to spare, and any lead offered was often proven useless as quickly as it had arisen.

Such was what he had grown used to over the year, in his search for Igneel. Even so, Gray wasn't the only one used to staying up for long periods of time; Natsu kept flying until the greys and browns and greens beneath him had been replaced with blue, and then returned. If there was no information to be had in Ishgar, then perhaps it was the wrong continent to be perusing.

He would sleep for now, with the sun beginning to sink below the horizon. Maybe by the time he woke up, word would have spread of a Dragon wanting answers, and animals would flock to see if they could be of assistance. Of perhaps they would flee, but in the end, Natsu doubted it would make a difference grand enough to be noticeable.

There had been years with no news. No Dragon sightings or mysterious sites left behind to observe. Gray didn't offer to come with him just so he wouldn't be lonely, and Natsu knew that very well, just as he could appreciate the gesture.

One way or another, Igneel would be found. Whether alive or dead, Natsu didn't know, nor would he have to care.

{So the Mighty Ones still continue their reign, I see.}

Natsu's eyes snapped open, his pupils quickly dilating in the light. The voice hadn't been that of a human or human language, and spying the lizard staring up at him from the ground, Natsu immediately knew who this conversation was being held with.

{I'm afraid not.} His words came out as growls and clicks, foreign to any being with evolved vocal chords. Speaking the language he'd known since before Igneel was even in his life was an option open to him, but doing so would also be less polite. {I am merely a prince, seeking answers about the fall of the kingdom.}

The lizard stared up at Natsu, its face not changing even when Natsu's breath sent the winds around him into a flurry. Its head fell to the side, granting Natsu an unimpeded view of the scar that ran along the entirety of its side, little more than a stretch of faded scales that ran from cheek to tail.

The lizard flicked at the air with his tongue. His head tipped further, quick enough to disturb the grass beneath his feet.

{This is the first conversation I have had with one of your kind, which has not been prefaced with an attempt of cannibalism.}

Natsu's ear twitched. It was more than enough to knock a passing bird out of the sky.

{You have survived a meeting with a Dragon before?} The lizard before him had his full attention. Which meant he didn't do anything to help when a feathery, ballistic missile slammed into the ground less than a foot away from it, because he didn't see or hear it approaching.

The lizard glanced down to the side, at the very long line that had been dug into the dirt and the unconscious bird that was now resting upside down against a tree on the far side of the forest clearing.

{I am no fool, I know the Great One I encountered did not wish my meat, nor my hide.} The lizard hesitated for a moment, before scurrying towards Natsu's foot and latching on to a claw. Taking the initiative, Natsu brought his hand up to his head, and the lizard disembarked atop his skull, situating himself much closer to Natsu's ear before continuing. {Though compared to she, your manners are impeccable.}

Natsu chose to ignore the implied insult, choosing to focus instead on the fact that whoever this animal was, it had the courage to insult him. Nothing else he's encountered before had ever given him lip after he revealed the Dragon form. This was the first time it had happened _during_.

{Would you happen to have any information which would be of use to myself?} Natsu closed his eye as the lizard lost its grip, using the claw that had elevated it to its current position to catch it before it could slip any further than his mouth. He repositioned it on top of his nose, looking far too silly for anybody to take seriously as he crossed his eyes in order to keep the lizard in his sight. {I seek the location of my father, though you would perhaps know him well as Igneel, The Fire Dragon King.}

A low breeze swept across the clearing, rustling the leaves that had already settled upon the grass and causing the grass to flutter. Old branches groaned with the movement from aside even older trees. Throughout it all, the lizard stood unmoving, gazing down upon the Dragon from the perch he had been granted.

{…It is curious that you speak of the Flame King, Great One. I had not assumed you would be quite so old.} Natsu felt, rather than saw the lizard leaving his sight, webbed feet and insignificant claws drumming along the scales towards his ear. His voice grew soft, then loud once more, forever accompanied by the scrape of keratin against Natsu's outermost layer of skin. {Tell me, how long has it been since you have hatched?}

{I am eighteen years of age, though you would likely know that better as…} Natsu narrowed his eyes as he forged the calculations in his mind, cursing the foolishness in leaving his scroll out of reach during one which time he could have used it. {…Two hundred and twenty-three moon cycles, perhaps give or take a handful of nights.}

The lizard's movements stilled, somewhere above his left eye. Natsu ignored the impulse to tilt his head to the side; he'd just end up throwing the lizard from his head if he did so. He didn't have to wait long for the noise to resume, and for a small head to poke into view from above his left eye.

{You are not truly Dragon, are you?}

Natsu closed his right eye to better focus on the lizard. It wasn't quite so easy a task, considering his pupil alone would be enough to lose the creature in.

{I am close, and that is all that matters.}

From somewhere on his back, Gray shifted, letting out a minuscule moan as he attempted to relocate the heat he'd grown complacent to over their journey. Without missing a beat, Natsu regulated a marginally larger amount of magic to the scales on his back, setting them aglow with heat and calming Gray's restless movement.

Natsu let loose a sigh that was more a snort, blinking before he realised what that would mean for the lizard. He needn't worry, however, as the lizard was able to land on his noise as he was thrown away from Natsu's eye, his tongue darting this way and that, his head following suit.

Eventually, he nodded to himself, his erratic movements slowing to a halt as he lowered his legs and curled up on the tip of Natsu's snout.

{The tale of the Flame King is perhaps not that which you thought it to be.} Immediately, Natsu was all ears, his back instinctively straightening. Gray let out another little groan as he was jostled in the movement, his dissent morphing into a snore halfway through as he turned over and almost fell off Natsu's back. {I was only a hatchling of a few moon cycles, but the time I speak of, the time I was born into, was one of pain and misery. War ravaged the land you rest upon, and the Flame King himself was one who dreamed to end it all and declare peace.}

The old lizard shook his head. With most of the distance closed, Natsu could make out far more of his body; much of it was pockmarked, and what little of it that remained untouched was a deep, rich purple.

{However, I'm afraid this story is not one which has a happy ending. There came a moment where he simply vanished, along with a sizeable number of his kin. They were never found, by scavengers nor historians, but it is interesting that you claim to be his offspring, Great One.} The small lizard stared directly up into one of Natsu's disproportionately large eyes, and despite the borderline comedic size difference, Natsu couldn't help but feel tiny underneath the gaze. {Because those events happened what a human such as yourself would call four centuries ago. And he has not been heard from since.}

The breeze that had been curling along the ground abruptly vanished. Natsu opened his mouth, letting it hang for a moment before it snapped shut. The crack of teeth echoed across the clearing as Natsu slowly inclined his head. The old lizard, taking the hint, leapt from his perch and scurried a few paces back as Natsu drew himself back up to his full height and glanced out over the canopy.

{…I see.} His voice was small, deceptively so for such a large beast. Natsu swallowed, not that it did him much good, as he unfurled his wings and sucked in a breath that had the branches of the trees before him bending in his direction. {Thank you for this information.}

The lizard inclined its head, retreating a few more metres back towards the bushes before pausing and shooting a glance up at the Dragon.

{A spirit of evil clings to your back, Great One. His guard hovers above your head and the gates of the Underworld await his assistance to open.} A low rumbling shook the ground. Neither Natsu nor the lizard payed it any mind, for vastly differing reasons. {I hazard caution, Great One. Should we never meet again, farewell.}

Natsu watched, silent, as the lizard that had just changed his life scurried out of the clearing. The noise of his movement faded from his advanced hearing after a moment, leaving Natsu with nothing but the wilderness for company. Slowly retrieving his scroll from where it was always kept, Natsu settled against the ground without a word, flipping the parchment in his hand to an angle equal to the purple lizard's length in centimetres and beginning to read.

He would wait out the days for Gray to wake up. They could decide their next move then, after he had enough time to puzzle over exactly what he had learned from an old lizard that had just been passing through.

It was only forty minutes later that Natsu realised he'd never asked the lizard for his name.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** I was never expecting to write a new chapter for this story. To be honest, I still don't expect myself to write another chapter, but I'll guess we'll see.

Don't think of this as a revival, more a test drive. If you feel like it, leave a review after reading to let me know what you think.

* * *

Warnings: Alternate Universe, Comedy, Trace amounts of Angst, Likely juvenile levels of humour, No Bashing, Ghosts, Zombies, Nonsense. Keep out of reach of children.

Pairings: [Currently] N/A

* * *

Natsu is a quiet boy turned dragon turned boy, who doesn't quite understand life outside his numerous scrolls. Erza's smile is bright enough to blind all to her unhealthy obsession of all things that go stab. Gray is relatively normal, when he isn't talking to ghosts or arguing with his strange tattoo. Jellal is… Jellal. Lucy is an heiress to an arguably criminal empire who accidentally stumbled into this mess and is content to stay; at least, when she isn't putting out spot-fires or trying to convince Happy that he is not, in fact, the next incarnation of the Devil.

* * *

"Why would she be ringing me _now?_ "

Gray scrunched up his face at the name on the screen, flicking the Lacrima out of his hand and sending it skidding along the length of the kitchen counter. Jellal's hand flicked out to catch it before it could fall off the edge, one finger hovering over the screen as he debilitated.

On the one hand, Cana calling Gray wasn't exactly a _rare_ occurrence. It had happened twice in the last month, after both he and Natsu had returned to the Guild with nothing to show for their search. The first time had gone entirely ignored, while the second time consisted of a very brief conversation that Jellal didn't know either the subject, nor the conclusion of.

Their absence from the Guild had been long and arduous journey. The revelation that Natsu had been raised by a Dragon that had apparently disappeared sometime within the tail end of the fourth century was odd and unexplainable, but it was accepted easily enough. Being frozen or transported in time for whatever reason was easy enough to move past, especially after multiple encounters with ghosts and a tower that was built solely to revive the long-since-believed deceased acolyte of a Death God.

Natsu had been amicable enough once they'd gotten back. A little tired, a little disappointed, but nothing some rest and social excursions couldn't fix. Gray was a different story, something the boy owed to having too much sleep on the outing.

He'd had plenty of time to sleep while Natsu was flying. The two had been to every neighbouring continent they knew existed, and even beyond. They'd flown beyond the bounds of every known map, found regions that were dominated by machinery and not a drop of ethernano, even settled on islands that would turn everything nature knew on its head. Even then, they'd not been able to complete any of their objectives.

Igneel was still missing. Natsu hadn't had much hope in that regard, not after his discussion with the old lizard. He'd still tried, of course, but the failure didn't irk him as much as it did Gray. They'd also been searching for Ur, after all, and they could be damn sure that she hadn't been gone that long. Finding her was just… less of a fairy tale ending to their adventures. A single woman was far less fantastical than a Dragon, so locating her should have been far easier a task.

If anything, news on her was harder to come by than news on any Dragon. At least Natsu had learned something about his parent, Gray still had nothing to go off except memories of a simpler time. Needless to say, it left his overall mood a little wanting. The only place he ever seemed to light up in was the kitchen, which was why the group had taken to spending more time in there in general.

The Lacrima chimed for the third time, and Jellal spared Gray a glance before moving his finger towards the option to hang up. The teenager was doing his best to glare a hole through the cupboard in front of him, not even paying attention as Erza continued to jab at his cheek with a full spoon, with the pretence of feeding him. The pile of dropped eggs was starting to get fairly large, and Lucy could only grimace and move to the seat beside her when some of it tumbled down and covered the top of the book she was reading.

Jellal had no idea where Happy was, but even he, with his seemingly infinite patience and incredible social competence, couldn't bring himself to really care. If he had to guess, then he would probably say that the cat was fishing in the clouds again. How he ever managed to catch anything was beyond his comprehension and willingness to consider.

From the corner of his eye, Jellal saw Gray suddenly straighten his spine, his eyes growing slightly foggy and unfocused. Having seen it thousands of times before, he slid the Lacrima back into Gray's waiting hand before the Ice Mage could even say anything, nudging Natsu's hand on the way back and nodding to their friend. They may not have heard the words, but they knew how to recognise the one-sided conversations well enough.

Gray jabbed at the Lacrima's screen, cutting off the annoying buzz with a curt, "what's the pro-?"

The room surrounding them shook with the explosion that rattled through the small device's speakers. Instantly, all five teenagers were on their feet, gripping various areas of the kitchen counter as Gray switched to speakerphone and nearly slammed the device down between them.

The sounds of more explosions came hard and fast, interspersed with cries of pain and declarations of magic. The constant mechanical whine of hydraulics in a far-off location was an undercurrent of noise to whatever was happening in the foreground, cut off in small bursts by Cana's extremely panicked voice.

 _"Attacked- people hurt- nobody else-!"_

"Cana!" Gray barked, leaning down closer to the screen. Beside him, Natsu fumbled for his ever-present scroll, unfolding it with steady hands even as the rest of him began to shake. Whatever was written there made his breath catch in his throat.

"…Oh no."

 _"Civilians-!"_ Someone on the opposite end of the phone screamed. Cana screamed too, rage replacing the pain that had been present before, and the following explosion shook the room enough to pop open a cupboard door.

The noise lulled for a moment, leaving nothing but hard breathing and the grinding of machinery in the background. Gray's knuckles turned white as Cana let out a shuddering breath on the other side of the phone, interjected with what sounded like small sobs.

 _"Please, nobody else answered. Gray, we need hel-"_

 _"IT'S GONNA FIRE IN LESS THAN A MINUTE! EVERYONE RUN!"_

 ** _"FUCK-!"_**

Gray's shoulders hunched as the Lacrima went dead silent, ice beginning to blossom along every surface in the room. Beside him, Natsu was turning the scroll in his hands over and over, each rotation faster and more harried than the last.

With a quick thrust of her wrist, Lucy reached for the Lacrima, a magic seal lighting up her palm. Thin tendrils of glowing yellow energy connected with every side of the device, prying into it gently and flaring with pale blue light once they succeeded. Erza and Jellal watched on, the former using the latter's hand to comb through her own hair.

Lucy's hair flowed upwards for a moment, wrapped in the same light as her magic. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when they reopened, her pupils shone with that same blue illumination, a frown tugging at the corners of her lips.

"Call came from Magnolia." She reported, her magic returning to her. Her hair descended back down to rest along her head, ruffled slightly out of place. "Are we…?"

"Of course we are." Jellal stepped out of Erza's grasp, offering her a sad smile as her hands gripped after him. The prospect of separating after listening to that didn't sit well with either of them, but at times like this, he was the one who would have to step up and make the decisions. Turning to Natsu, he tapped carefully at the boys arm, making sure not to brush up against the scroll that now resembled little more than a blur. "We have less than a minute. Which way is Magnolia?"

Natsu didn't even look up from his scroll as he gestured with his chin. "South."

Jellal nodded, patted Erza once on the head when she reached out for him again, and swiped a piece of toast from what remained of his half-eaten breakfast. Half-eaten by Erza, of course.

"Meet me there."

His entire form awash with Heavenly Body Magic, Jellal leapt up above the cupboards, and punched his way through to the outside world.

He would have to fix that wall later, of course, but for now, traversing Grimoire Heart's many corridors would take far too long.

 **XxX**

Heavenly Body Magic was very aptly named.

Jellal skirted low to the ground, the sound barrier lying beaten and bloodied somewhere near the beginning of his journey. The waves he was kicking up behind himself could have been considered tsunamis in their own right, and they were only getting bigger as he accelerated to about half the speed of an actual meteor. He was being careful to not touch anything on his journey, because a discharge of even a small percentile of the energy he was using would have been enough to set off an extinction event.

Given what he knew himself capable of, the speed Jellal was maintaining may as well have been a slow jog. Having a natural aptitude with the stars and planets themselves happened to come along with a natural aptitude for a _fuckton_ of magic potential, enough that he'd once decided to traverse the globe, just to see if he could.

He'd made the journey in about the time it had taken for Happy to finish the meal he'd been having. And Happy was nothing if not a quick eater.

To put it simply, Jellal was _fast._ He was _really fucking fast._

As a flyer, Natsu was fairly quick too. And yes, the Dragon Mage had him outstripped in terms of raw magical energy, but Jellal was fairly certain that Natsu had the highest concentration of magic on the entire planet. And hey, number two wasn't that bad.

Everyone is his group was ridiculously powerful in their own right. Even Lucy, who'd come from a background so vastly different to everyone else's, still has a spot reserved in the upper echelon of Grimoire Heart. The others had their own secrets and methods for how they got to where they were, but for Jellal, it was a little bit simpler than that.

He was the oldest, and by default, the most responsible. Lucy could take care of herself well enough, despite all having had people waiting on her hand and foot before her pseudo-kidnapping into the Guild. Gray was adept in the kitchen as well, but that was about where it ended. Natsu and Erza were both fairly hopeless, and more often than not, it came down to Jellal to think them through whatever problems they may face that couldn't be blasted right through. And even then, he was right there in the front, doing a lot of the blasting.

Whenever one of them forgot to eat, Jellal would be the one making them a meal. Whenever Erza couldn't sleep, Jellal would be the one sacrificing his rest so she could squeeze the life out of him and ignore the nightmares. Whenever Natsu couldn't find his scroll, Jellal would be the one giving up his own down time to figure out where the ridiculously illusive parchment could be. Whenever one of the small group committed the constant social faux pas they were wont to do, Jellal would be the one apologising to whoever they'd managed to upset this time.

And now, apparently, when one of them got a call for assistance, Jellal would be the one rushing off in someone's time of need.

The fact that it was Cana calling for assistance was only a point in her favour, really. She'd not turned them in after discovering they were members of a high-ranking Dark Guild, for better or for worse. No, she'd trusted them, accepted them, and kept in touch. That had been years ago now, and she'd only ever proven herself trustworthy.

He wouldn't complain either way, though. Gray and Natsu had saved him from a life of slavery, and he'd already made the oath to stay by Erza's side until she didn't need him any longer. Truthfully, he would have liked to stay by her side a lot longer than that, but the last thing he would ever allow himself to do was force her into anything. Both their lives had been unpleasant enough, without him fracturing the bond they'd forged through desperation and hellfire.

Lucy and Happy were a part of that group too, even if they hadn't been there quite as long. They were family, the first one Jellal had ever known he was a part of.

Gray had never commented about any ghosts hanging over his shoulders, though, so it was entirely possible that his birth family was out there somewhere. It would have been nice to find them, maybe talk to them and see what kind of people they were, but for now, Jellal was content.

And he was also beginning to focus, because Magnolia was in his sights.

Not bad for a flight of about eight seconds.

The first thing Jellal took notice of as he gained some height was the enormous building in the centre of Lake Sciliora. A magic circle lit up the front of the… was that a robot? Despite the situation, Jellal rolled his eyes, absently trying to figure out if he would be able to hold off on trashing it completely before Erza got a peek. She would love this.

Chances weren't looking great.

Especially since that was a seal for the Abyss Break, and it absolutely looked big enough to take out the entire town, and then some. His vision was slightly blurry, with the rain that seemed to be focused in the small general area, but that wouldn't be nearly enough to make him question his conclusion.

Jellal was intimately familiar with the workings of the Abyss Break. It wasn't even all that intentional, mainly just a coincidence left over from the few months that it had taken him to find his particular niche in casting. It was during that time when he proved to himself and everyone around him why Hades considered him such a goldmine, even when compared to Dragons and Demons; His connection to magic was both undeniable and absurd.

He could read a spell in a book and perform it effortlessly. The different types of Magic he had mastery in was well over a hundred. The only magic he hadn't learned in the entirety of Grimoire's Library was Time Magic and whatever the fuck was in The Book of Zeref. Jellal wasn't about to touch either of those with a pole the size of Natsu's Dragon form, screw that and everything they stood for.

It also helped that Jellal was a very quick reader. Not quite up to Lucy's level, but his academic exploits more than spoke for themselves.

Part of those exploits was the knowledge of how, exactly, to mix Fire, Earth, Wind, and Water in order to get the right consistency for the Abyss Break. It wasn't a quarter of each, as most people starting out were lead to believe, Fire actually played a surprisingly small role in the process.

Even so, Jellal had never really thought he would need to put that knowledge to the test. The Abyss Break, plain and simple, was a spell reserved entirely for war times. The damage that could be done would only ever increase with the size of the magic seal, and there was no upper limit on that. Granted, whoever was using the spell in that robot was taking their sweet time, and the blast was nowhere near the level it would have to be to end any large-scale battle on its own, but the circumference of the circle easily encompassed the town.

The driver was looking to exterminate every single person in Magnolia. There was no other reason anyone would ever cast the Abyss Break on a dense population.

That was absolutely inexcusable, and Jellal would not stand for it. The only reasons he hadn't taken action against Hades' plans for the world were because the man had given them a place to live, and Gray had assured him after telling their small group that it was doomed to failure from the get-go. Even so, if Hades pulled something unexpected, then he would be going down hard, hospitality be damned.

Still, that didn't help Jellal in his current situation. He needed a means of stopping a genocide, and the options were frustratingly limited.

The magic seal was being drawn manually, that much was clear. Theoretically, Jellal could stop whoever was in that robot, along with anyone aiding and abetting him, in the span of a few seconds. All it would take would be seven magic seals of his own, and they would be facing the judgement from seven stars. The problem with that, however, was that Jellal didn't know who was in that building, and whether or not they were innocent.

He'd seen enough innocent blood in his time, there was no reason or chance for him to choose to spill more.

That left him with only one option, and that was to match firepower while also choosing to redirect. Unfortunately, there was only one thing he could think of to call up on such short notice that could match the Abyss Break. And on top of that, there was no guarantee that this plan would pan out as he wished it would.

Defence was more up Natsu's and Erza's alleys, with their scales and armour, respectively. Gray's Demonic Ice also had the nifty quality of being completely unbreakable too, which would have been extremely helpful here. As it stood, with the others likely hitching a ride while Natsu tore ass to get out here, Jellal's own wits were all he could rely on.

Thankfully, even though Gravity Magic was something Jellal was well-versed in, Heavenly Body Magic was just so much better on so many levels.

With a quick push, Jellal threw himself towards Fairy Tail's shore, alighting the ground in front of a small group of people. Cana stood front and centre before them all, a card between her fingers and a scowl on her face as she refused to back away from what was almost certainly a quick and painful death.

Only Cana's eyes lit up when she saw him, and Jellal idly wondered how she could recognise him when they had barely ever interacted before. Must have been the blue hair, or the extremely recognisable tattoo, if he had to wager.

"Get inside," he ordered, before any of them could say a word. Many of them moved to do what he'd said without question, which wasn't entirely surprising. Jellal had defaulted to the voice he would always use to make sure Erza was listening to him. It didn't command respect, so much as promise unspeakable punishments if he wasn't obeyed.

Granted, he wasn't about to tickle any of them into submission like he was used to doing to Erza, but they didn't need to know that.

Without giving any of them a chance to question him, mainly because there was a fucking bunker buster two seconds away from being launched, Jellal spun around on his heel and snapped a hand out to the side. In the blink of an eye, a mirror image of the magic seal before him had been erected, thrumming with enough power to match the behemoth of a spell that was about to bear down upon him.

The worst part about knowledge of the Abyss Break, in Jellal's humble opinion, was the option of casting it. Even as he activated his Meteor and flashed forward until he was about halfway between both magic seals, he could shake the feeling that what he'd just done was just wrong. Downright inexcusable.

Shouts of alarm followed after them as he cut off his momentum, raising both arms into the air as an Abyss Break exploded towards him from either side. Despite the obvious peril that he was in, every thought in Jellal's mind was a calculation, after an estimation, after a fleeting hope that this wouldn't go poorly.

Everything was in place. Jellal had never been wrong about magic before. All of his considerable experience was pointing towards the fact that this _would_ work.

"Altairis!"

Intense winds burst out of nothing as the air and rain was sucked into the space where Jellal's wrists had crossed. The vacuum continued to grow, picking up water from the lake and even drawing in the stormy clouds above him. Every member of Fairy Tail that had remained outside had grabbed something connected to the ground in order to stay on their feet, a few being forced to catch others when they were flung off their feet in the direction of the lake.

It was really no wonder they'd been told to get to shelter. It only got worse when the massive beams that were the Abyss Breaks seemed to converge on Jellal's position, and the winds spiked far enough to begin ripping pieces of the ground away. Everyone who wasn't being blinded by hair or debris could see the destructive spells curving around Jellal's body, close enough to singe at his flapping clothing as they too were sucked into the vortex and met in the middle.

Small fractions of the spell were bleeding off from the main mass, vaporising whatever water or rock they managed to tag. For the most part, with both massive magicks fighting against one another in a space that was becoming very difficult to escape, there was nothing either Abyss Break could do, aside from add fuel to the Heavenly Body Magic that was keeping them prisoner.

In the middle of it all, Jellal let loose a small smirk. He could feel it in the strain of his arms, the Abyss Breaks stalling each other out and giving the Altairis' gravity time to absorb them both. Had he tried it with only one in play, it would have most likely curved around his position, going right through the vortex in the process. It would still take away a large majority of the power in that scenario, but the purpose of the Abyss Break was in the name.

The entire point of it was to _break_. And if two of them were busy trying to break the other, then that would offer ample opportunity to siphon off the energy and apply it elsewhere. Granted, Jellal was powerful, and it was possible that outright absorbing a single Abyss Break would have worked, but he would rather test such a theory when there wasn't an entire town, or at least Guild, at stake.

And if he hadn't been draining the energy from both spells the entire time? Well, goodbye Magnolia. And enough of the continent to force people to redraw all their maps.

Eventually, after what couldn't have been more than a quarter of a minute, the spells began to die down. That was probably for the best, because Jellal's arms were beginning to shake under the strain of keeping what was essentially a black hole suspended above his head. The raw ethernano that had just been absorbed was hundreds of times more than what would have been necessary to destroy the Tower of Heaven. Gray probably could have held it with no issue, but nobody really knew what was up with Gray, so he didn't count.

That still left him with an overcharged Altairis to take care of. Between his own power and what he'd just assimilated, Jellal was confident that he had the capability to destroy the moon currently in his hands. He didn't want that. The moon was actually kind of important to the continued survival of the planet.

So, he did the next best thing.

With a heave and a ho, Jellal reactivated Meteor, carrying himself up into the atmosphere and dragging the Altairis along for the ride. After a few seconds, the air was getting too thin to breathe, and Jellal cut his momentum entirely, twisting his arms above his head and sending the improvised black hole flying directly up.

Within the blink of an eye, it was little more than a pinprick of black light, just another star barely visible in the daylit sky.

And then it exploded.

Holy fuck, did it explode.

 **XxX**

There was still about half a forest between Natsu and Magnolia Town when Gray suddenly bent to the side and retched.

Natus veered at the sound, doing his best to crane his neck around and see what the fuck was happening on his back. "Did something just throw up!?" He yelped, his deep and intimidating Dragon voice echoing around them, seeming to raise in octaves the further it went.

"It was Gray!" Erza shouted immediately, pointing an accusatory finger into the boy's cheek. The movement knocked away the hand that Gray had clamped over the lower half of his face, and he retched once more, the noise far more violent than the last.

"Natsu, how close are we?" Lucy shuffled over to Gray, rubbing soothing circles into his back. It didn't seem to do all that much.

Natsu dipped around a particularly large tree, coming out of the maneuver smoothly. There was a fair bit more care in his movements than usual, much to Erza's consternation and Lucy's relief. He took a deep breath, spreading his wings out to catch another current and sped himself up.

"We're only about a minute out." A plume of fire drifted out of the Dragon's mouth, travelling underneath his wings and boosting him further. "Gray, what's happening with you?"

Gray shook his head, swallowing harshly before cautiously peeling his hand away from his mouth.

"Curse." He grunted, before clapping his hand over his mouth again. His shoulders began to shake as he continued to talk through his fingers. "It smells old, and powerful. So damn misearable, too. Like… like mouldy water, or something."

Lucy's nose curled at the description. Erza attempted to grab at some leaves from a tree they were passing, and would have fallen off her perch if Natsu's wing didn't come up and nudge her back along his scales.

She giggled, swiping some hair away from her fake eye, and grinned up at the sky. "I see Jellal."

Natsu crested the last hill before the town came into view right as a blast lit up the entire sky. Blinding light and gale force winds assaulted the town as he flared his enormous wings, slamming feet first into one corner of the large lake.

The noise echoed in the silence, much like it was expected to after the appearance of a Dragon. Natsu raised his head high, scraping at the clouds above him as he looked down upon the war that had been waged on the ground below.

And then there was the sound of retching in the distance, and he cringed, his entire body going rigid.

"Sorry." Came a small voice from his back. "I think the curse is in the water, and a raindrop landed on me."

Fairy Tail and Phantom Lord were not privy to this short conversation.

So when the massive Dragon that had just touched down started shrieking bloody murder and rolling around in the lake, they really had no clue what the fuck was going on.

Funnily enough, it was very effective towards earning a reprieve in the fighting.


End file.
